Soyfer, Jura / [Composer of the “Dachaulied”].

‘It’s Up to Us!’ – Collected Works of Jura Soyfer. Selected and Translated by Horst Jarka.

Riverside, California, Ariadne Press, 1996. 15 cm x 22.5 cm. 591 pages. 34 illustrations. Original Hardcover with dustjacket. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear.

Jura Soyfer (1912-1939) was born in Kharkov, Ukraine. He was eight when he arrived in Vienna after fleeing the Bolshevik revolution with his parents. In ‘Red Vienna’ Soyfer became a fervent socialist and and was an outspoken writer of the Viennese subculture during the Austrofascist regime (1934-1938). He spent three months in jail for subversive activities. On 13 March 1938, he was arrested as he tried to cross the Austrian border at St. Antonien Joch above Gargellen into Switzerland. He was later transported to Dachau concentration camp. Here, Soyfer met the composer Herbert Zipper, and together they wrote the famous Dachaulied, the Dachau song, which cynically took up the Nazi motto Arbeit macht frei (″work liberates”), written above the entrance to such camps.

In the autumn of that year, Soyfer was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp where he died of typhoid fever the day after his release was granted, on 16 February 1939. His remains were sent to the United States and are buried at the Hebrew Free Burial Association’s Mount Richmond Cemetery. (Wikipedia)

This collection is arranged under the headings of Verse and Short Prose, including, for example: Lullaby for an Unborn Baby / Object Lesson for a Race Theory / Youth in Despair / ‘Heil Hitler’ / ‘Fury’ / etc.

Plays, including, for example: The End of the World / Broadway Melody 1492 / etc.

The Novel: ‘Thus Died a Party’ – combines politcal analysis and literary imagination and examines the underlying causes of the Social Democratic defeat of 1934.

The volume closes with ‘Dachau Song’ a triumph of human dignity over barbarism.

• Keywords: 20th Century History · 20th Century Literature · 20th Century Poetry · Activism · Anti-War Literature · Anti-War Poetry · Austrian · Austrian Literature · Catalogue No.8 – Judaica Collection · German · Jewish Culture · Judaica · Judaica – Collection · Judaica – Rare · Judaism · Judentum · Poetry · Political · Political fiction · Political Literature · Prose · Protest · Satire · World War One
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9780929497556
• Inventory Number: 200081AB

EUR 95,--