Kasriel Broydo

Kasriel Broydo was a Jewish Lithuanian songwriter, singer and coupletist. He was born in Vilnius and played in various troupes and marionette-theaters. His lyrics and songs, like, were the folk songs of his place and time.
After the first World War Broydo moved to France and continued to work in theater. When Germany invaded Poland, he returned to Vilna. He was an integral and cherished participant, as writer, director and actor, to almost all the revi-theater programs in the Vilna ghetto theaters. An example of his inspirational skill was, a 1943 song of hope which he wrote when it seemed the Soviet forces might prevail against the Germans.
His last program in the Vilna ghetto, called, was almost ready for performance when, during the liquidation of the ghetto in September 1943, Broydo was seized by the Gestapo. He was taken to Estonia, where he and his friends, Sime and Marek Shapiro, although interred, created performances for their fellow inmates in the labor camp. It was at this time that Broydo became religious.
Broydo's song, music by Henech Kon, written on a motif by Moishe Broderzon, was taken into Sh. Katsherginski's ; the Vilna Ghetto Ensemble performed it in the revue.
Broydo's most famous song may be sung in revi-theaters in Poland before the Second World War. In 1945 he was sent to Königsberg, Germany, where he and hundreds of other Jews were thrown in the Baltic Sea and drowned.

More Broydo songs

sung by the orphans of the Vilna ghetto
- also called - music by Yankl Trupianski
now known as from his revue Korene yorn un vey tsi di teg
sung in the ghetto by Dora Rubina
to music by Fanny Gordon, sung by Mina Bern and Joseph Widetzky before World War II