Malke Snook 's father was a farmer. Before the war, she studied at a technical college. She also attended a religious school for three years. She was deported to Auschwitz during World War II. After the war, she raised a child that she was able to rescue from a woman about to be sent the crematory. She raised her son traditionally Jewish and made sure he would attend religious school.
Other Interviews:
Extinguishing CoalsLeft Behind
Khust, Ukraine
In this clip, Malke Snook sings a very sad song about an abandoned lover. Her sweetheart left for Di goldene medine, the Golden Land of America, and had promised to write and keep her in his heart. But as time passes, she waits for the letters that never come.
The song stems from the period of massive emigration from Ukraine in the early twentieth century. Men often preceded their families in emigration with the intention of sending for their families as soon as they got settled. All too often, though, the families were forgotten and the young men, liberated from all the strictures of life in the Old World, chose instead to start a new in America, leaving their families behind. Married women left behind became agunahs, abandoned wives, and were not permitted to remarry without a divorce or proof of their husband's demise. The presence of so many abandoned wives, often with children to care for and no wage-earner, created a large social and economic problem for the Jewish communities in Ukraine and Poland. Sometimes women were impelled to hire private detectives to search out their husbands in America. In this song, the couple is not married, so the deleterious effects of abandonment are limited to heartbreak.
S’iz shoyn fariber dray monat, dray yor
er iz dokh eyn birger atsind,
fun zayn ershter gelibter hot er shoyn lang fargesn,
er hot shoyn eyn froy mit eyn kind.
Un di gelibte tut veynen un klogn,
zi shpayt dokh shoyn nebekh mit blut.
geshribn hot zi im a brivele,
dos lebn on im ken zi shoyn nisht,
as soon as I’ll arrive in America
one letter I’ll write to you at once."
By now three months, three years passed,
he's a citizen by now,
he had long forgotten about his first love,
he already has a wife and child.
And the beloved keeps on crying and lamenting,
she, the poor thing, already spouts blood.
She wrote him a letter,
she can’t go on life without him.