poking around this morning looking for new songs to practice on the guitar, I came across the following lyrics:
Still, the night, & decked with starlight,
And the frost burned like fine sand.
You remember the time I did teach you
To hold a pistol in your hand?
In fur jacket & beret,
Clutching a hand granade,
A girl whose skin is velvet
Ambushes a cavalcade.
Aim, fire, shoot--& hit!
She, with her pistol small,
Halts an autoful,
Arms & all!
Morning, emerging from the wood,
In her hair, a snow carnation.
Proud of her small victory
For a new, free generation!
--it almost seems, except for the part about the fur jacket & beret, like it might be the sort of thing used, say, to incite a Palestinian girl to an act of terrorism.
it is, however (my songbook informs me) a" Jewish partisan song of the Vilne Ghetto uprising against the Nazi army in 1943" (original Yiddish title Shtil, Di Nacht, by Hirsh Glik) & is thus inciting a girl to an act of Freedom Fighting.
then --- now
Still, the night, & decked with starlight,
And the frost burned like fine sand.
You remember the time I did teach you
To hold a pistol in your hand?
In fur jacket & beret,
Clutching a hand granade,
A girl whose skin is velvet
Ambushes a cavalcade.
Aim, fire, shoot--& hit!
She, with her pistol small,
Halts an autoful,
Arms & all!
Morning, emerging from the wood,
In her hair, a snow carnation.
Proud of her small victory
For a new, free generation!
--it almost seems, except for the part about the fur jacket & beret, like it might be the sort of thing used, say, to incite a Palestinian girl to an act of terrorism.
it is, however (my songbook informs me) a" Jewish partisan song of the Vilne Ghetto uprising against the Nazi army in 1943" (original Yiddish title Shtil, Di Nacht, by Hirsh Glik) & is thus inciting a girl to an act of Freedom Fighting.
then --- now