Jenny Eisenstein, a Holocaust survivor who has spent the last six decades performing songs of defiance and hope, will be the special guest at a Holocaust memorial service at the Beth Zion Congregation in Oshawa on Sunday.

Jenny Eisenstein

Eisenstein, born and raised in Poland, has been performing Jewish and Yiddish folk songs since 1950 for audiences that have included former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

She said she likes to represent the poets and writers who documented what happened during World War II while the events were unfolding.

“They wrote poems, they wrote essays, the history of each day they lived through during those devastating years, and I am committed to bring their names to life and let people of today know that we were cultured people and we did not just face the tragedy without being aware of how important it is to memorialize it in writing,” said Eisenstein, who was liberated from Auschwitz and currently lives in Thornhill.

During the April 26 memorial service, Eisenstein said she plans to speak about the day the Komionka Ghetto, where she and her family were forced to live near her hometown of Bedzin, Poland, was liquidated.

Having recorded her testimony on paper, Eisenstein said she plans to read her story about the hunger and thirst she and her family experienced, as well as the unsanitary conditions they were forced to live in and the day they were sent to Auschwitz.

Eisenstein said she will also sing songs that were written before and during the war.

One of the songs she’ll perform, Es Brent (It Is Burning), written by  Mordechai Gebirtig in 1938, was a prophetic song, she said.

“This was a song we sang that was a call before the Nazis came in. He was warning the people. He was inspiring.”

One of the verses reads: “It is burning, brothers, it is burning! You are the only source of help. If you value your town, take up the tools to put out the fire, put out the fire with your own blood. Don’t just stand there, brothers, with your arms folded. Don’t just stand there, brothers. Put out the fire, because our town is burning.”

She said that she intentionally chooses songs and poetry that have a message of defiance.

She said that The Partisan Song by Herschel Glick, who was a ghetto fighter from Vilna, is one of those songs that she plans to perform at the service.

“[The song] spread throughout all the concentration camps. That is where I learned it,” Eisenstein said.

“It is a song of defiance, it is a song of hope, a song of the energy that we still possess and we mustn’t diminish it.”

The second and third verses of The Partisan Song are, “From lands of green palm trees to lands all white with snow, we are coming with our pain and with our woe. And where’er a spurt of our blood will drop, our courage will again sprout from that spot.

“For us the morning sun will radiate that day and the enemy and past will fade away. But should the dawn delay our sunrise wait too long, then let all future generations sing this song.”

When asked to speak about what the songs mean to her, Eisenstein was overcome with emotion.

“Every time I perform, I pray that my songs will be heard, not only with the ears, but with the heart,” she said.

“I see what I sing. I see it before my eyes, the events which have been recorded in that poem. I am hoping that it penetrates my audience.”

The message Eisenstein wants younger generations to walk away with is that the Jewish people are strong and must “overcome the difficulties that appear on the horizon.

“We must go beyond it and know that we are worthy to be an independent people. We are worthy to stand in line with any nation and live up to the principles of humanity and of justice.”

Lina Zatzman, who organized the service along with Cheryl Frayne and Marian Kassel, said that the service will also memorialize the victims of other genocides, such as the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

The programming also includes performances from the shul’s Hebrew school choir and a candlelighting ceremony in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.

“There is something really touching about [the service] because of the children’s involvement, the teens reading the names,” Zatzman said, adding that she and other congregants will be reading   the names of family members who were Holocaust victims.