“After all the horrible experiences, stories I cannot even recount, they eventually caught me and took me to Nováky, to a camp,” 94-year old Holocaust survivor Dalma Špitzerová starts her story.
Only after these words does the melancholic, familiar melody of Čerešne (Cherries) begin to unfold.
The song, which was created by Slovak actor Milan Lasica and Slovak musician Jaro Filip in the early eighties, is best known thanks to an interpretation by the Czechoslovak queen of chanson Hana Hegerová. Yet, there are numerous renditions.
The Pressburger Klezmer Band has dressed up the song in a new version. This time it is not sung in Slovak but in Yiddish, and is entitled Karshelekh. The original video, released in late January 2020, tells the true story of a love that was born in a concentration camp.
