Zishe Bagish. Dos Gezang fun Neger-Folk “The Song of the Negro.”

(AFRICAN-AMERICANA)

Chicago, M. Ceshinsky

Sighet-Maramures (north-western Romania), Tip."Centrala" /

1936

FIRST EDITION. Text entirely in Yiddish. In two parts: Translation by Bagish of Langston Hughes’ poetry, along with African-American spirituals and related folk-songs. One of 500 copies. Cover illustration by Y. Tinovitzki. This copy inscribed, signed and dated (Bucharest, 1936) by the Author.

An uncommon linkage between the worlds of Yiddish and African-American literature. Zishe Bagish (the adopted name of B. Vaysman) was born in Lodz into a rabbinical family but grew to become ideologically tied to Communism.  He lived in Belgium, France and Romania and in 1938 settled in Bialystok. When the Nazis took over the town from the Soviets, Bagish was thereafter deported to Auschwitz where he gave up his life to save others. (See Yiddishe-Lexikon). A rare first edition. Only a single copy recorded in WorldCat.