VOA慢速英语2015 记录历史——一个难民

AS IT IS 2015-08-15 Recording¹ History, One Refugee at a Time 记录历史——一个难民

Seventy years have passed since World War Two ended. By the year 1948, many refugees from the war had left Europe and gone to the United States. That summer, American Ben Stonehill made tape recordings² of Jews who had survived German death camps. Stonehill met with the Holocaust³ survivors⁴ at New York City’s Hotel Marseilles. He recorded more than 1,000 of their songs and stories. Now that cultural history is available to people around the world through the Internet.

That is 17-year old Masha Leon in a recording made in 1948. It is one of over 1,000 songs gathered from World War II refugees who had moved to the United States.

Ben Stonehill was an immigrant himself and a Jew. By trade, he was a carpet-installer, covering the floors of homes and offices. But he also had a strong interest in preserving Yiddish culture.

Miriam Isaacs is a language expert specializing in Yiddish. She explains that, after the Holocaust destroyed the heart of Yiddish culture, very little was left.

"There was an awareness⁵ that Jews had an important culture, and that these cultural treasures were in danger of being lost and that these survivors were the last authentic⁶ carriers of this eastern European Jewish culture, and so he took upon himself to do this recording."

Nearly every weekend during the summer of 1948, Ben Stonehill went to work. He carried borrowed recording equipment on the train from his home in Queens to the hotel in Manhattan. Once he got there, he asked each person to sing whatever song they felt like singing.

In a speech he gave in 1964, Stonehill described what he remembered seeing.

"The hotel was a stopover point for newly arrived refugees from all the concentration camps and ghettos of Europe. Graduates of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek and all the others greeted one another unashamedly before my very eyes and into the recorder, which was in constant operation daily from morning till way past midnight. Suckling babes, bearded rabbis, swarthy youths, blond-haired maidens⁷ and Hassidic-garbed followers⁸ of one or another dynastic rabbi spoke⁹ their varied¹⁰ anguished¹¹ utterances¹³ that in playback, constitute a veritable babble¹⁴ of tongues."

They sang folksongs and prayers, ballads¹⁵ from the resistance, love songs, lullabies, songs of exile and homelessness, songs criticizing Hitler and Mussolini and political parodies…

"So, you've got a bit of everything in there."

A short time ago, we heard Masha Leon singing "Tuk Tuk Tuk" into Stonehill's recorder as a teenager. Nearly 70 years later, she had plenty of memories of her visits to the Hotel Marseilles in 1948. She had immigrated¹⁷ to New York in 1946, and would come to the hotel from her home nearby to meet boys.

"I remember the lobby. It was full of people you had older people, sitting on suitcases, toward the back. There was a balcony with refugees coming in and out, that I really paid very little attention to, but the action, the younger people were all in the lobby. It kind of hummed. It was like an orchestra of people kind of melding and working together."

The huge project of examining the 39 hours of recordings and organizing the songs fell to Miriam Isaacs. She has spent the past three years on this process.

“Because it's only almost entirely¹⁸ just an aural¹⁹ archive, I often don't know who is doing the singing, know very little about the singers. Occasionally we have their names and where they come from. But very often not."

As of now, Miriam Isaacs has written down the words for 66 of the songs. They are now listed on the Center for Traditional Music and Dance website. The site also includes the original recording.

"We all need to understand what it's like to be a refugee. Not from a statistical²⁰ point of view, and not because of shocking horrors, but what it's like to be without a home, what it's like to know that you're never going to go back to your homeland. To not be sure where you're going to go next. These songs really express the emotional heart of being in that place, trying to cheer yourself up, trying to be hopeful while at the same time, giving voice to loss, and grieving."  

Words in This Story

preserve – v. to keep something in its current condition; to protect

authentic – adj. real

immigrate¹⁶ - v. to come to a country to live there

Holocaust - n. the systematic²¹ suppression of Jews by Adolf Hitler and his supporters before and during World War II

utterance¹² -- n. statements or spoken words; comments

1 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

2 recordings   

n.记录( recording的名词复数 )；录音；录像；唱片

参考例句：

• a boxed set of original recordings 一套盒装原声录音带
• old jazz recordings reissued on CD 以激光唱片重新发行的老爵士乐

3 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。

4 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

5 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

6 authentic   

a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的

参考例句：

• This is an authentic news report. We can depend on it. 这是篇可靠的新闻报道, 我们相信它。
• Autumn is also the authentic season of renewal. 秋天才是真正的除旧布新的季节。

7 maidens   

处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球

参考例句：

• stories of knights and fair maidens 关于骑士和美女的故事
• Transplantation is not always successful in the matter of flowers or maidens. 花儿移栽往往并不成功，少女们换了环境也是如此。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

8 followers   

追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件

参考例句：

• the followers of Mahatma Gandhi 圣雄甘地的拥护者
• The reformer soon gathered a band of followers round him. 改革者很快就获得一群追随者支持他。

9 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

10 varied   

adj.多样的，多变化的

参考例句：

• The forms of art are many and varied.艺术的形式是多种多样的。
• The hotel has a varied programme of nightly entertainment.宾馆有各种晚间娱乐活动。

11 anguished   

adj.极其痛苦的v.使极度痛苦(anguish的过去式)

参考例句：

• Desmond eyed her anguished face with sympathy. 看着她痛苦的脸，德斯蒙德觉得理解。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The loss of her husband anguished her deeply. 她丈夫的死亡使她悲痛万分。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

12 utterance   

n.用言语表达，话语，言语

参考例句：

• This utterance of his was greeted with bursts of uproarious laughter.他的讲话引起阵阵哄然大笑。
• My voice cleaves to my throat,and sob chokes my utterance.我的噪子哽咽，泣不成声。

13 utterances   

n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论

参考例句：

• John Maynard Keynes used somewhat gnomic utterances in his General Theory. 约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯在其《通论》中用了许多精辟言辞。 来自辞典例句
• Elsewhere, particularly in his more public utterances, Hawthorne speaks very differently. 在别的地方，特别是在比较公开的谈话里，霍桑讲的话则完全不同。 来自辞典例句

14 babble   

v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语

参考例句：

• No one could understand the little baby's babble. 没人能听懂这个小婴孩的话。
• The babble of voices in the next compartment annoyed all of us.隔壁的车厢隔间里不间歇的嘈杂谈话声让我们都很气恼。

15 ballads   

民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴

参考例句：

• She belted out ballads and hillbilly songs one after another all evening. 她整晚一个接一个地大唱民谣和乡村小调。
• She taught him to read and even to sing two or three little ballads,accompanying him on her old piano. 她教他读书，还教他唱两三首民谣，弹着她的旧钢琴为他伴奏。

16 immigrate   

v.（从外国）移来，移居入境

参考例句：

• 10,000 people are expected to immigrate in the next two years.接下来的两年里预计有10，000人会移民至此。
• Only few plants can immigrate to the island.只有很少的植物能够移植到这座岛上。

17 immigrated   

v.移入( immigrate的过去式和过去分词 )；移民

参考例句：

• He immigrated from Ulster in 1848. 他1848年从阿尔斯特移民到这里。 来自辞典例句
• Many Pakistanis have immigrated to Britain. 许多巴基斯坦人移居到了英国。 来自辞典例句

18 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

19 aural   

adj.听觉的，听力的

参考例句：

• The opera was an aural as well as a visual delight.这部歌剧对于听觉和视觉都是一种享受。
• You can use these tapes as aural material.你可以把这些磁带当作听力材料。

20 statistical   

adj.统计的，统计学的

参考例句：

• He showed the price fluctuations in a statistical table.他用统计表显示价格的波动。
• They're making detailed statistical analysis.他们正在做具体的统计分析。

21 systematic   

adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的

参考例句：

• The way he works isn't very systematic.他的工作不是很有条理。
• The teacher made a systematic work of teaching.这个教师进行系统的教学工作。