Thanks Liland, Wilfried and Mark - I've been following all this with great interest and admiration for your Hebrew and Jiddisch ! I've been very quiet, because I've been having great fun searching through all kinds of websites, dictionaries and even Jewish cookery books (from which I've found a delicious recipe for rosewater ice-cream, which has got absolutely nothing to do with this whatsoever, but a pleasant diversion, anyway)...

Now ... way back in the aeons of time (such as last week !), Mark said "I'd be interested to know if anyone has pursued this further... did the theatrical song come from a folksong in yet another tradition ?"

In one of my on-line searches around the word "dona", I came across this, which may or may not start to throw a different light on the origins:

From the poem "A Parody", which is part of "A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass", the memories of a slave in America, written in 1845: "They'll bleat and baa, dona like goats..."

Here, "dona" is the sound made by the animal.

Interesting that this source is American, concerns slavery, and comes from a period much earlier than the Holocaust.

I haven't yet been able to find a reference to "dona" with this meaning in any English/American dictionaries, but once I can tear myself away from "The Complete Jewish Cookbook", I'll have a go again.

Shalom ! Aloha ! Mach's gut !

- Jeanie