The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #7574   Message #2605771
Posted By: Jack Campin
06-Apr-09 - 02:11 PM
Thread Name: Origins/lyrics: Hey Zhankoye
Subject: RE: Hey Zhankoye
Rubin reports the place was destroyed. Being right on the Nazis' invasion route, you would hardly expect anything different.

I doubt many Jews from there were even lucky enough to be sent to a camp. Nazi SOP in the occupied Ukraine was mass executions on the spot.

Seeger's version only has the first version in common with Rubin's. Rubin's sounds a lot more plausible as something from the 1930s. As Allan S says, that last verse is obviously about the US and no way could it have been written in the Crimea (if you were going to make an all-men-are-brothers statement then and there, you'd start by naming the ethnicities immediately around you, like Turks, Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, Gypsies and Circassians - Negroes would not be a group it was much of a challenge to express solidarity with).