The Song Zunala by Ida Roganzka

Yiddish cultural life next to anti-Semitism doesn't really get a mention in any of our songs. And it's not just fear of the authorities. Their minds were inevitably focused elsewhere. One of my favourite songs collected in Kazakhstan, Kinder Yoon, written by a woman called Ida Roganzka. This is one of the most popular Yiddish songs that circulated in Poland and in the Soviet Union in the 40s. The song Zunala talks of dancing on the graves of fascists, of faith in survival and thrashing the enemy. It's this sense of hope and even luck that pervades. A photograph taken that year in Bukhara in Uzbekistan tells us