My shopping cart
Your cart is currently empty.
Continue ShoppingWe Will Outlive Them: Legacy, Solidarity, Promise
The story goes like this:
Lublin, Poland, 1939 -- a group of Hasidic Jews, dragged out -- some tellings say to a barbed wire fence, some say to a field -- by SS soldiers, lined up to be shot. The commandant sarcastically and with hate in his heart ordered the men to "sing themselves to their deaths." At first, one of the men began a song of reconciliation, but no one joined with him. He quickly changed his improvised tune, singing over and over:
Mir veln zey iberlebn, iberlebn, iberlebn
We will outlive them, outlive them, outlive them
Witnesses reported the song spread rapidly through the group. At first the commandant laughed, said historian Moshe Prager, but then he realized they weren't accommodating him. Quite the opposite. When the SS shot at the men, they pierced bodies dancing joyfully, in solidarity with one another and in belief that whatever happened to them as individuals, the Jewish people would outlive the Nazi regime.
And we did.
The song became a mainstay of Jewish resistance songs, rediscovered by a new generation.