Listen to the Mural

This is a Hungarian song, which translates to “The Rooster Is Already Crowing”. The song is attributed to Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Taub (1751–1821) of the small town of Nagykallo, in the Northeastern part of Hungary. Before the war, the town was well known for its strong Hasidic roots. Rabbi Taub was a renowned religious leader who was famous for his original songs. He often borrowed non-Jewish melodies, which he altered to have relevance to Jewish worship and religion. The story goes that he purchased the melody of this song from a shepherd.

The song represents spiritual longing, and hope for a brighter future, often interpreted as redemption after a long exile. It is thought that the song was sung by some Hungarian prisoners arriving at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The song remains an iconic anthem of Hungarian Jewish memory and is frequently sung during the March of the Living ceremony at Auschwitz to commemorate the victims.

This is a famous Yiddish folk song of Eastern European origin, often played in the folk Klezmer style. While it originated in the 19th century, the song gained popularity with a wider audience in the 1940s when it was published by Abraham Ellstein and recorded by The Barry Sisters.

The song’s title refers to the balalaika, a three stringed Russian instrument. It is a love song in which a young man poses riddles to a woman about love and life. In the first half of the song, the young man asks, What can grow without rain? What can burn without ceasing? What can yearn and cry without tears? In the second half, the woman calls him foolish and answers all of his riddles confidently: A stone can grow without rain, love can burn without burning itself out, and a heart can cry without tears.

The Mourner’s Kaddish is a Hebrew prayer that Jewish people recite in all prayer services in memory of those who have died. Along with the Shema prayer (which is also present in the mural), the Kaddish is one of the most important prayers in the Jewish services. The prayer does not explicitly mention death, but instead is a prayer praising God and expresses hope for peace.

The Kaddish was recited often in ghettos and in Concentration Camps in acknowledgement of those murdered by the Nazis.

The Shema is perhaps the most well-known prayer for Jewish people. The prayer gets its name from its opening word: Shema, which means ”hear” or “listen.” The prayer consists of three separate passages taken from the Torah: Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:13-21; and Numbers 15:37-41. The opening line, “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad” (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”), emphasizes the singularity of God. The prayer continues on to detail how to practice faith, including love of God, teaching children to love God, and recitation of the Shema.

In the section of Deuteronomy where this prayer first appears, Moses addresses Israelites before they enter the promised land. He urges the people to listen to and love God fully, above all else. The prayer is recited twice daily, as part of the morning and evening prayer services, and typically said with eyes shielded or closed.

This poem was written by Hungarian writer and resistance fighter, Hannah Szenes.
Szenes was born in 1921 in Budapest, Hungary to an assimilated Jewish family. Amid rising antisemitism, Szenes emigrated to British Mandate Palestine in 1939 to study agriculture. There she enlisted in the British Army and was selected for the Special Operatives Executive- a team that conducted espionage and sabotage missions in Nazi occupied Europe.

On a mission to aid a resistance group in Hungary, Szenes’ team learned Hungary had been occupied by the Nazis and decided to abort the mission. However, Szenes and two colleagues decided to carry on, and were captured at the Hungarian border. Though tortured, Szenes would not speak, and was ultimately tried for treason and executed by firing squad at the age of 23 in 1944.

Szenes wrote this poem while living on Kibbutz Sdot Yam near the ancient port town of Caesarea in British Mandate Palestine in 1942. After her death and the end of World War II, the poem was set to music, and is commonly sung on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. The song is also referred to as Eli, Eli, the first line of the poem.

This song by M.M. Warshawsky (1848–1907) is about a Jewish teacher educating young students on the Hebrew alphabet. The song became popular through the active efforts of well-known writer, Sholom Aleichem, in the early 20th century. Due to its popularity in Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, the song today represents Jewish musical memory of the pre-Holocaust era.

While a beloved song about teaching the alphabet, the final stanza notes the historic theme of tragedy for the Jewish people, stating: “When, children, you will grow older / You will understand / How many tears lie in these letters / And how much crying.” The lyrics of the song have been adapted throughout the 20th century several times to reflect the acute challenges and hardships that Jewish people faced. For example, during the Holocaust the lyrics were changed to describe life in the ghetto: “At the ghetto wall a fire burns, the surveillance is keen.” And, in a version from the Soviet Union, the lyrics reflected on the local Jewish community’s challenges in the 1960s.

Modeh Ani is a 12-word prayer recited upon waking to express gratitude to God for another day of life. Based on themes of gratitude from the Bible’s Book of Lamentations, the prayer was first seen in Rabbi Moshe ben Machir’s work, Seder HaYom, in the 16th century.

The prayer translates to: “I give thanks before you, King living and eternal, for You have returned within me my soul with compassion; abundant is Your faithfulness.”

Martin Niemöller was born in 1892 in Germany. He was a Lutheran pastor and theologian. Initially, Niemöller supported German nationalism and Adolf Hitler but as the Nazi regime became more oppressive his stance shifted and he became a vocal opponent of the Nazis. He co-founded the Confessing Church, which resisted Nazi interference in Protestant churches. He was arrested in 1937 for his resistance activities and spent seven years in concentration camps until the war ended in 1945. The quote emerged from speeches he gave after World War II, reflecting on his regret for not speaking out against the Nazis early on. The quote notes the gradual persecution of different groups and serves as a warning against indifference and inaction in the face of oppression. This quote and its adaptations have been widely used to highlight the importance of standing up against bigotry and oppression before it is too late.

Chad Gadya is a long Aramaic song which is often sung after the Passover Seder meal. The song features a rapid escalation beginning with a cat that eats a little goat, then a dog bites the cat, then a stick beats the dog. The song continues on to list a series of forces, each more powerful than the next, that overpower the one before. At the end, God overpowers the final villain: the angel of death. While it is a seemingly playful children’s song, it is meant to teach the lesson that actions have consequences, and God is the most powerful force.

The song first appeared in a prayer book in Provence in the 13th-14th century, and then later appeared in Haggadahs, Passover prayer books, printed in Prague in the 1500s. It is believed that the song came about as a way to keep children engaged through the long ritual of the Passover Seder meal.