The Israeli rock band
El Hameshorer
("To the poet")
presents:
Two Gentlemen in the Snow
The Warsaw Ghetto Poems by Władysław Szlengel
Unique, chilling and touching rock show - a musical-memorial project dedicated to the sharp, sarcastic, and compassionate songs written by the most prominent and beloved poet in the Warsaw Ghetto
Władysław Szlengel
The poems of Władysław Szlengel, a Jewish-Polish poet and lyricist, were written in the Warsaw ghetto underground and were passed from one to another, from bunker to bunker. Tens of thousands of the Warsaw ghetto's Jews read them. In his poems, Szlengel expressed the community's thoughts and emotions and articulated the injustice, the Nazi's brutality, and the helplessness of the every-day Jew who had lost everything.
In May 1943, Szlengel was killed in the main bunker during the Warsaw Ghetto's Uprising while in his early thirties. Before he was murdered, he successfully smuggled a notebook with his poems outside the ghetto. He named the notebook "What I read to the dead", and by a miracle, it survived.
The poems were published in Poland, 1977. In 1987 his songs were translated by Holocaust survivor, Halina Birenbaum, and were published in Hebrew.
In 2017 El Hameshorer recorded an album of Szlengel's poems with new Hebrew translations and original music written by the members of the band and produced by Oded Perach (work with Berry Sakharof, Johnny Shuali, and many others.)
The Band
El Hameshorer is an Israeli rock band that specializes in composing and reviving Poets' songs. The first album of El Hameshorer: "Hayim Nachman Bialik" (2010) was dedicated to the poems of the Jewish national poet. The second album, "Two Gentlemen in the Snow – The Poems of Wladyslaw Szlengel from Warsaw Ghetto", commemorates the poems of the popular poet of the Warsaw ghetto, who described the feelings of the starved, desperate Jews under Nazism.
The band performs the Hebrew songs in Israel and around the world.
El Hameshorer members are:
Boaz Albert Vocals & Guitars
Tal Goldberg Guitars
Ido Kagan Bass Guitar
Uri Meiselman Drums.
The Music
Ships Sails On
Official Video Clip
A Page from the Diary of the Actions
Iive at Barby, Tel Aviv
Reviews
Liron Teeni
Journalist and radio broadcaster
"Even though the poems were written in the darkest times of humanity, some of them feel very relevant […] this album is like a punch in the stomach."
7 Nights
"el hameshorer took a sadness bomb – poems written in the Warsaw Ghetto by Wladyslaw Szlengel, and wrapped them with an impressive album and excellent musical performance."
Leon Feldman
Radio broadcaster and editor
Kol Hacampus & Hakatze Radio
"Fantastic album […] A very powerful musical project. My stomach is throbbing […] a marvelous CD-Booklet pack."
Related Projects
Abramek
The Poems of Abramk Koplowitz
A teenager from Łódź Ghetto
Musical Lecture
Abramek
The Poems of Abramk Koplowitz
A teenager from Łódź Ghetto
Musical Lecture
Abramak Koplowitz was murdered in Auschwitz at the age of 14. His father, who survived the camp, returned to their apartment in Lodz after the war and found his son's notebook. The notebook rolled with him to Israel and was buried in the attic - where it was found only after the father's death. Abramak's poems, which tell of life in the Lodz ghetto from a unique child-poet angle, were published and translated into many languages.
Uri Meiselman found the poems of Abramak entirely by accident when he searched for a book in a second-hand bookstore. As soon as he read the songs, he enlisted Ohad Koski - a member of the Ice Nine band - for composing the tunes and invited musician friends to participate in the exciting work: the album "Abramak", which was released in 2005 by HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed Youth Movement.
In the lecture, which incorporates listening to songs from the album, Uri relates to Abramek and his songs, which survived and were revived.
Uri Meiselman
Bialik
The National Poet
Rock concert / Musical Lecture
With original music alongside the familiar tunes, stories and personal interpretation, contemporary music production, and lots of love, El Hameshorer present Bialik at the eye level - and deep into the heart.
