Never Say

Never say that there is only death for you
Though leaden clouds may be concealing skies of blue -
Because the hour that we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!
From land of palm-tree to the far-off land of snow
We shall be coming with our torment and our woe,
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth
Shall our bravery, our vigor blossom forth!
We’ll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,
And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,
And if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.
This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
It’s not a song that birds sing overhead.
It was a people, among toppling barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and grenades.
So never say that there is only death for you
For leaden clouds may be concealing skies of blue -
And yet the hour that we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

Words: Hirsh Glik Music: Russian folksong

After the war this hymn of the underground fighters of the Vilna Ghetto became the song of Jews throughout the world. It was written in 1943 after a group of Jewish partisans had lost 15 of their comrades in battle with the Germans, just as word reached Vilna of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Hirsh Glik, one of the most creative and promising young poets of Vilna, was a partisan who fell in battle against the enemy in Estonia.