Krakow

Sayat Nova: Dun en glkhen (Entreaty of the king before his exile), Gaguik Mouradian, solo kamanche, 3’40”

Hawelka

“Although Leopold Hawelka cannot remember the Emperor, he acts as if he saw His Majesty every day. Who has once visited Café Hawelka, will know what I mean. Herr Leopold is blessed with that science of clairvoyance, which is the privilege of the truly great restaurateurs, and thanks to which he finds out all your wishes. Herr Leopold is just sitting in the corner, under the weight of his hundred years, sipping coffee, straightening his bow-tie, you get up from the table because you want to piss, and Herr Leopold exactly know that you stood up for a piss, so he points where you find the bathroom. The situation is similar if you stood up for any other reason, Leopold finds out that one more coffee, five wines plus four apricot brandies.

This was exactly our order. How much pleasure we had in it, what a smile it brought to our cheek, how much we flushed from it! I was sitting in the dark, smoky room, which has not been renovated since the war, and my chest was kneaded by a greater pride than as if I took part at a maharaja’s party, since I had a better place here, barricaded away from the tourists flocking from France, Spain or Albion, as this place is only visited by people coming from the little corner of the world called Mitteleuropa. I thought about the two brave Moravians, the Hawelka brothers, who one day decided to leave their homeland. One went south and settled in Vienna, the other the north, and came to Krakow, and although both left forever the region of Brünn and Olmütz, none of them left the territory of the state where they were born. He in Vienna opened a café and was satisfied with it, the one in Krakow opened a deli and offered a breakfast service, a very trendy business at that time, which allowed for the habitués the on-site consumption of the purchased goods in back rooms dedicated for this purpose.


Both businesses prospered very well, so the brothers put roots in their new places. The one in Vienna became a German, the one in Krakow a Pole, he started to write his name as Hawełka, and since the Strasbourg foie gras, the Prague and Dalmatian ham, the curd of Liptov and Olomouc, the oysters of Pelješac, the Istrian truffle and the Braunschweig brawn have always ben excellent in his shop, he won the title of Purveyor to the Imperial and Royal Court. Ah, if one was permitted to print on his products in the local language, that Purv. to the Imp. and Roy.! He no longer needed any other letter of recommendation, any consumer’s recognition, laurels, professional honors, golden and silver balances, copper groschens or Michelin stars. “Purveyor to the Imperial and Royal Court”, that’s all. Even the kids in Czernowitz know that His Majesty only consumes the finest things.

Over time, the breakfast place was developed into a restaurant, whose reputation also reached beyond the borders of the Empire. The Viennese coffee house was also besieged by the art world of the imperial city as well as by large number of travelers. This is how the story of the brave Moravian brothers became part of the history of the Monarchy, and this is how it was amalgamated with the traditions of two nations, the Austrians and the Poles, with which they originally had nothing to do.”

Robert Makłowicz: Café Museum, Európa, 2012

Door on the Grodzka

Chopin: Mazurka 6, Movement 1 fis-moll. Artur Rubinstein, 1965

The cantors of Kipnis

I have read with great devotion one of the most recent posts by Studiolum on the photos of Menachem Kipnis taken on his Jewish contemporaries in Poland. As he was a collector of folk music, it is no wonder that he took so many pictures on Jewish musicians, cantors and gramophone-winding beggars. Had I known beforehand that Studiolum was working on such post, I would have sent him some almost a century old cantor’s song recordings to illustrate the pictures and to revive the figures on them just as the waltz by Chopin has ensouled the house in Cracow.

Even if I have come too late to that, nevertheless I would like to share some melodies, videos and stories with our readers about the cantors featuring personally or indirectly on the photos of Kipnis. The first one will be Yosele Rosenblatt of whom if not the voice, but at least the gramophone reproducing it and the beggar taking it around on a worn-out push-chair was immortalized by Kipnis.

“Exploiting the talents of Josele Rozenblat. Josele Rozenblat’s singing is flowing from the beggar’s gramophone. People throw money for the music to the beggar from the windows. By “carrying” Josele in a push-chair from one courtyard to another, the Jew manages to earn a living in Warsaw.”

Rosenblatt: Hineni heoni mima‘ash

Although Rosenblatt was born in the Ukraine, nevertheless he belongs a little bit to us Hungarians as well. He was eighteen when, in 1900, he became the hazzan, cantor of the community in Munkács (today Мукачево, Ukraine). Later he went to Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia) and finally in 1912 he emigrated to America. There his Hungarian relations were not cut either: he became the cantor of the Hungarian Jewish community Ohab Tsedek in New York. With his fantastically flexible, skillful and expressive tenor voice he could have had a brilliant career as an opera singer. They say that Toscanini himself invited him to sing the title role in Halévy’s opera La Juive. Rosenblatt, however, refused the invitation with self-confidence by saying that he dedicated his voice exclusively to the service of God.

This service – and a number of invitations to a cantor’s concert tour – brought him in 1933 to Palestine as well where he played himself in the film The Dream of My People.


The film displays fantastic images of Palestine as a British mandate, following Rosenblatt who tours singing around the Holy Land, by boating on the Jordan:



…visiting the tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron:



…and at the end, at the very end in Jerusalem, the Holy City:



The last video is the most dramatic one, as it has recorded the very last appearance of Rosenblatt. Some days after having sung the Yiddish song Aheim (At home), he died in a heart attack. He was buried on the same Mount of Olives which is shown in the background in the first seconds of the above video. The second part of the clip shows the huge crowd gathering at the funerals of the renowned cantor. Towards the end of the film an interesting historical document is the presence of the British cavalry of the mandate covering the event.

At the funeral of this great cantor prayers were chanted, very suitably, by two other renowned cantors who had similarly set out from Eastern Europe and made their career in America, and who by chance happened to be in Palestine at the time of the tragic event. One of them was Zavel Kwartin, born in the Ukraine, who from 1908 until his emigration in 1919 was the cantor of the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest. Between 1926 and 1936 he lived in Palestine where besides the synagogue service he also performed at several concerts. The name of the other cantor may sound familiar to the attentive readers of Río Wang: it was that Mordechai Hershmann whose childhood house and his aunt looking out of the window of the house was also photographed by Kipnis.

Hershmann, born in Eastern Galicia, made his career – similarly to almost every promising talented young cantor – in America, having emigrated to New York in 1920, after some years of cantor’s service in Wilno (today Vilnius in Lithuania) and military service in Russia. Similarly to all his renowned colleagues, he also went on concert tours even as far as Southern America and Palestine where he was caught by the news of the unexpected death of Rosenblatt.

“Jewish idyll in a new Ukrainian village. A Jewish house in Orszyce (Żytomierz district). The peasants earn their living by carrying the Jews around the village. In this old peasant house grew up the famous cantor Mordechaj Hirszman, now popular all over America. His aunt is looking from the window.”

Hershmann: Elu dvorim

The Podolian Gershon Sirota was the only exception among the celebrated cantors of the early 20th century who, in spite of his brilliant European career and successful concert tours, never took on a stable cantor’s position in America. Between 1927 and 1935 he continuously performed at concerts both in the Old and the New World, and in 1935 he accepted the offer of the cantor’s position in the Norzyk Synagogue of Warsaw. In 1943, shortly before his seventieth birthday he fell victim, together with all his family, to the Nazis in the ghetto of Warsaw, thus outliving only by one year Kipnis who had taken his picture and who also died in the ghetto of Warsaw by a stroke.

“The Warsaw cantor Gerszon Sirota.”

The fame of Sirota’s forceful and expressive tenor voice has reached far outside the walls of the synagogues, also due to the fact that he – in contrast to Rosenblatt – did not shrink back from performing opera arias either. Caruso, on listening to one of his performances, allegedly gave thanks to God in prayer for the fact that Sirota had not chosen the opera theater to unfold his exceptional talents. To the illustration of these talents I have selected if not the most characteristic, but certainly one of the most peculiar recordings of him. We see the renowned cantor for some minutes in the Yiddish film Dybbuk which since then has won a historical fame to itself. The film was shot in Poland in 1937 on the basis of S. Ansky’s play of the same title. Besides Sirota’s expressive voice, the film is also made particular by the images of Cracow’s famous Jewish quarter Kazimierz.

Las fotos de Menachem Kipnis

La Sinagoga alta de Cracovia debió edificarse bien entrado el siglo XVI —quizá, según precisan algunos autores, entre 1556 y 1563— y nos consta su existencia en 1697. Su nombre proviene de que el lugar de oración no estaba en la planta baja, sino en el piso inmediatamente superior, igual que en la Sinagoga alta de Praga, también del siglo XVI. De hecho, es la sinagoga más alta entre la docena de ellas con que cuenta Cracovia. En el edificio contiguo se instituyó una escuela de Talmud en 1810.


El mobiliario de la sinagoga fue destruido durante la Guerra pero en los 60, al ser transformada en taller de restauración, se descubrieron en el muro oriental frescos renacentistas con inscripciones en hebreo y un arca labrada de la Torah, que se repararon luego. Hoy alberga exposiciones judías. Cuando estuvimos aquí vimos las fotos de Menachem Kipnis. Menachem Kipnis captó la vida de los judíos en la Polonia de preguerra, y este espacio es uno de los escasos lugares auténticos que encontramos en el kitsch parque temático en que se ha convertido el gueto de Cracovia, reconstruido para disfrute de turistas americanos e israelíes.


Menachem Kipnis (1878-1942) fue una de las figuras más conocidas en los círculos judíos polacos antes de la Guerra. Nació en la ciudad volinia —hoy ucraniana— de Ushomir, dentro de una respetada familia de rabinos y cantores jasídicos. Fue uno de los mayores investigadores, recopiladores y divulgadores de la música popular yidis. Sobre ello escribió artículos y libros, publicó enteros volúmenes de melodías originales o con sus propios arreglos y las difundió junto a su mujer, la cantante Zimra Zeligfeld, en conciertos y conferencias a lo largo y ancho de Polonia, Alemania y Francia. Durante sus trabajos de campo en Polonia tomó asimismo numerosas fotografías. Las que merecían ser publicadas iban acompañadas de sus propios comentarios.

Explotando el talento de Josele Rozenblat. El canto de Josele Rozemblat surge del gramófono del mendigo. Desde las ventanas, la gente le echa monedas para que suene su música. «Transportando» a Josele de un patio a otro, el judío consigue ganarse la vida en Varsovia..

Comerciantes de Varsovia que venden ropa vieja. Van normalmente de un patio a otro. Ahora están descansando un momento en el escalón de una entrada. El hombre que habla en el centro suelta un discurso político a sus dos colegas. Los dos hombres mayores le prestan poca atención, más ocupados en sus propios problemas. Aún no han ganado el suficiente dinero para el sabbat.

En una sala de la Asociación de Artistas Judíos de Varsovia. En la Asociación de Artistas Judíos de América juegan habitualmente a «finagel», que aquí se considera particularmente aburrido hoy en día, así que en su lugar juegan a «damka»…

En la Asociación de Artistas Judíos de Varsovia. Un grupo de hombres y bellas mujeres artistas estudian nuevas obras americanas publicadas en la revista «Forwerts», así como las ilustraciones de la sección de arte.

Un grupo de jóvenes miembros «bunds» de Varsovia.

Chicas de Varsovia. Sin nada mejor que hacer, se sientan en un barco del parque Saski y se pintan los labios.

Pequeño rabino. El heredero del rabino de Aleksandrow (una pequeña ciudad polaca) de paseo por Ciechocinek en compañía de tres judíos jasídicos.

Un abuelo con su nieto de camino a visitar los balnearios próximos a Otwock (Polonia). Fotografía tomada especialmente para «Forwerts».

Comerciantes judíos con cestas de hortalizas y fruta en el mercado de Kazimierz (Polonia).

Chicos de la escuela (jéder) jugando en las calles de Falenica (cerca de Varsovia).

Cortejo judío en un pueblo ucraniano nuevo. Una casa judía en Orszyce (distrito de Żytomier). Los campesinos se ganan la vida llevando a los judíos por el pueblo. En esta vieja casa campesina creció el famoso cantor Mordechai Hirzsman, ahora popular en toda América. Su tía es quien mira por la ventana.

En el balcón, un hombre y una mujer de Równe (Volinia) se permiten un respiro en el aire primaveral que corre por la estrecha calle de su casa en el pueblo.

Escena de Równe (Volinia). Tres mujeres se sientan a murmurar a la puerta de la casa. Fotografía tomada para «Forwerts».

Szymon Josef, cochero de Rożyszcze  (pueblo de Volinia, hoy Polonia) con su calesa y caballos.  Llevó a la mitad de los habitantes del pueblo a la estación del tren —todos partieron a América. Ahora no tiene a nadie a quien llevar…

Judíos de clase media en el balneario polaco de Krznica, en los años 30. Después de tomar el baño, discuten de política.

El valentón de Brajtbard. Mojsze Hoc, cochero de Ciechanow, es el judío más fuerte de Polonia. Deja Varsovia para partir hierros y cadenas y emular las hazañas de Zisze Brajtbard.

Jokel Manufakturist coloca sus pertenencias en el pequeño carrito y da vueltas con ellas por Ciechocinek (un balneario en Polonia) tratando de vender sábanas y colchas.

El antiguo rabino de Odesa, Icchak Heler, autor de los libros Chemdat Icchak y Torat Icchak. Salió de Rusia hacia Polonia y se estableció en Ciechocinek (un balneario polaco). Lleva las ropas tradicionales jasídicas. Está sentado en un banco con una sombrilla, mientras aspira el aire fresco.

En el sanatorio Madem de Międzeszyn (cerca de Varsovia). Este año, como es lo normal, alberga a 200 muchachos de familias pobres. A los chicos se les da comida, ropa y son atendidos por médicos. Los chicos de esta foto juegan bajo el sol en el patio haciendo mucho ruido.

Chicos de Cracovia de familias jasídicas.

Jóvenes jasídicos de Varsovia, de buena familia, circulando por Nalewki. Fotografía tomada para «Forwerts»

Vista de Varsovia. Escena de Wołówka —zona de Varsovia donde se compra y vende ropa vieja.

En otra época solía tocar el arpa bajo la ventana de su amada. Ahora, con el arpa, consigue unas pocas monedas por los patios de Varsovia.

Últimas noticias. Los viejos judíos de Varsovia están tan absortos leyendo los periódicos que no han advertido al fotógrafo. la foto se tomó en el parque Krasińskich de Varsovia para «Forwerts».

El cantor de Varsovia, Gerszon Sirota.

El cantor de Varsovia, Gerszon Sirota, con su esposa. Fotografía tomada en casa de M. Kipnis.

Menachem Kipnis tuvo la fortuna de morir en 1942 en el gueto de Varsovia de un infarto. Así no alcanzó a ver la deportación de su esposa y de sus amigos. Su colección completa de música popular, su obra y sus fotos fueron completamente destruidas. Solo sobrevivieron estas imágenes que mandó al periódico yídis americano Forwerts. Aquellas imágenes, ahora mostradas en esta exposición, son el testimonio de un mundo perdido.

*

Después de escribir esta entrada, Két Sheng añadió en Poemas del Río Wang este documentado,
conmovedor e imprescindible comentario sobre los cantores fotografiados o mencionados
por Kipnis, publicando también preciosas grabaciones y vídeos originales.