Gura Humora Elegy: Three Poems by Shilu Ellenbogen

PDF: Gura_Humora_Elegy-sample.pdf

Program notes by the composer

These three poems are intensely personal to me. Gura Humora (now Gurahumorului) is my father’s ancestral town in South Bukovina, where he lived most of his early childhood before emigrating to Minneapolis in 1912 at age seven. The province of South Bukovina was then part of the Hapsburg Empire, but became part of Romania under the Treaty of Versailles.

Gura Humora has a long history going back to the 15th century. By 1941 its population was nearly 5,700, almost half Jewish. For most of that time it had seen relative prosperity, and relations between Jews and their Gentile neighbors, mostly ethnic Germans and Romanians, were mostly peaceful.

After Hitler came to power, antisemitic behavior increased, but life for Jews was still bearable. That changed in an instant on Oct. 10, 1941. SS troops entered the town, rounded up the Jewish population and force-marched them some 200 miles across the Dniester River, the southwestern border of what is now Ukraine, to the province of Transnistria. Many thousands from Gura Humora and other areas perished from exhaustion, exposure, starvation, typhus fever or other diseases, or murder at the hands of the Germans or Romanians.

The exiles were placed in various locations in Transnistria and subjected to forced labor and the most appalling conditions. The death rate was high — in spring 1944, only 100 returned to their ruined town. They were not welcomed by their erstwhile neighbors, who had taken over most of the Jewish homes. Almost all the surviving Jews emigrated from Romania, the majority to what would soon become Israel.

The bonds forged during the pre-war years and the exile remained strong. The Israeli former residents of Gura Humora and environs formed, as did those formerly of other European districts, an association that for many decades organized biennial reunions and other events. From this came a volume of Gura Humora history and recollections of its former Jewish citizens, self-published in Hebrew in 1992.

The association sent my father a copy, which he proudly showed me. I almost jumped out of my skin. My family had little connection with Judaism and Jewish culture, but as an adult I enthusiastically embraced my Jewish identity. “Dad,” I declared, “someone has to get this translated into English.”

And so it happened — at his initiative and expense. I read every word of the book and was left both with sadness at what the Gura Humora Jews suffered, and pride in the resilience and perseverance of the survivors.

For decades I had been drawn to composing music about the Holocaust, but haunted by fears I could not handle such a vast and terrifying subject. The Gura Humora history volume offered a way to approach a small portion of the Holocaust. I resolved to set texts from it and even received permission from the association to do so, but kept putting it off, letting the rest of life intervene.

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic closed everything down, I read Michael Hirsh’s The Liberators, a book of recollections by American G.I.s who participated in liberating the Dachau concentration camp complex. This led to my setting five poems by Dee Eberhart, one of those soldiers. The work, Memories of Dachau, was completed in April 2020.

Now I was completely out of excuses, but it took another eight months to return to the Gura Humora history. From it I selected three poems by Shilu Ellenbogen and began work in late December. I completed the work on Feb. 18, 2021.

Shilu Ellenbogen, according to his cousin Israel Ellenbogen, was born in Gura Humora in 1898. His family moved to Austria during World War I, and Shilu served in the Hapsburg army. An explosion impaired his eyesight and disfigured him. He returned to Gura Humora and died of cancer in 1955.

Ellenbogen wrote his poems in Yiddish, giving me an issue to confront. I’m uncomfortable composing to non-English texts, especially in a language in which I have no fluency. However, Ellenbogen writes in mostly strict rhyme and meter, and even the best translation would not capture these. They are as integral to the poetry as the words themselves.

And I have the best translation. Prof. Robert Peckerar graciously took time to edit and translate the poems, for which I am deeply and forever grateful.

I am likewise grateful to Dr. Robert Shafer for looking the piece over and wisely suggesting that I add piano accompaniment to the second movement. Which I did.

Ellenbogen begins 1941 with the sudden uprooting and forced emigration, with ever-increasing misery, but at the very end strikes an optimistic note of hope for the next generation. The trochaic meter made 6/8 the obvious time signature. In the third stanza the basses take over the melody with a modulation from D minor to A minor; the fourth stanza modulates back to D minor, ending in a triumphal D major chord.

Shushke, vintl is not a narrative like 1941, but rather a deep-felt expression of despair and homesickness. Key signatures progress by stanza: G minor, C minor, D minor, back to G minor. Ellenbogen’s last line contains an extra trochaic foot, which serves as the basis for the coda.

The piano sets a merry dance rhythm for Se vil zikh nit in gantsn. The exile is ended; the Jews are free to go where they please, be who they please. But in the middle of the second stanza Ellenbogen slams on the brakes. There has been too much loss, and the future is bleak. The tempo slows abruptly, D major gives way to D minor. Ellenbogen again departs from the iambic meter at the last line, providing a basis for the final coda.