The album contains three premiere songs: Warsaw Children, Zog nit keyn mol - meaning Never Say in Yiddish, from a Jewish resistance song - and Mach Dir Nichts Daraus - Don't Worry, in German. Warsaw Children, composed by Andrzej Panufnik in July 1944, is one of the most famous songs of the time. Its lyrics were written by Stanisław Ryszard Dobrowolski. The tune was engraved on a vinyl on the 1st of August with the purpose of broadcasting it at an underground radio station named Thunder.
No defeat can break the free
No hardship can daunt the daring —
We will go together to victory,
Where the people stands arm in arm.
Zog nit keyn mol, also known as Partizaner Lied – Partisan’s Song is the most famous uprising song written in Yiddish. The lyrics were authored by Hirsch Glick, a Jewish poet and partisan who was imprisoned in the Weiße Wache concentration camp and later transferred to the Vilnius Ghetto. The song was written to the melody of the Soviet То не тучи – Those are not clouds, originally performed by Leonid Utesov.
Laibach formed in 1980 in the industrial town of Trbovlje. The band’s name is the German version of Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana. The band’s work and performances raised a great deal of controversy – the group’s members were often harassed by the government in former Yugoslavia.
After having released the second album via the British label Cherry Red Records Laibach gained a significantly larger audience.
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Their international breakthrough came when the group signed a contract with the famous Mute Records, associated with Nick Cave, Depeche Mode, Nitzer Ebb and Yazoo to name just a few.
A more pop-oriented audience became acquainted with Laibach’s work through the band’s notable covers of hits such as Life is Life by Opus, Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones, Across the Universe by The Beatles and Europe’s Final Countdown.
The project is commissioned by the National Centre for Culture and funded by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for the 70th anniversary of Warsaw Uprising.
Sources: press materials edited by FL, translated by Kasia Dolato, 11/07/2014