"Where is the house, and where is the street"

[Charlotte Douglas]

You might want to post your query on the Alba listserve - it pertains  
to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, but there is a lot of information on  
the Spanish Civil War and even the prison camps.  Their archives and  
website is www.alba-valb.org.  From there you can join and ask your  
question.

Charlotte Douglas

On Nov 13, 2009, at 8:34 PM, Sarah Marie Parker-Allen wrote:

> Hello, all. I can't think of where else to ask this. Thanks in  
> advance to any replies!
>
> In 1982, my paternal grandfather (born in NY in 1912, raised in a  
> Yiddish-speaking household whose adult members listed themselves on  
> the 1910 census as being from "Russia," but his parents were in fact  
> born in Jonava, Lithuania) recorded an album of songs he and his  
> comrades sang while he was in one of Franco's prison camps during  
> the Spanish Civil War. Snippets can be heard for free on the  
> Smithsonian website:
>
> http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=17841
>
> Two of the recordings are in Russian. One of them, listed as number  
> 211 under the name "Evening Chimes," is too much of a challenge for  
> me to understand with my year and a half of undergraduate Russian  
> studies. I've been trying to sort out the story behind the other one  
> - track number 112, "Where is the House." You can actually hear the  
> entire Russian portion of the track by clicking on the little play  
> icon next to the track name. I like this one mainly because I  
> understood all but two words after about the fifth week of Russian  
> 101.
>
> The translation my grandfather gives immediately afterwards and in  
> the liner notes is "Where is the house, and where is the street, and  
> where is the girl that I used to meet?" The only references I'm  
> finding online are to a very similar song in French (with a little  
> boy) and a mention on this page:
>
> http://bibliotekar.ru/encSlov/3/165.htm
>
> Which is problematic in that it seems to me that it is talking about  
> romantic themes in the Stalinist era, and either my grandfather was  
> remembering it wrong (he says in the recording that this is a song  
> he learned as a lullaby from his mother,) or the last word is  
> different. And there's no explanation of where the song comes from,  
> which is what I'd really like to know. Googling the phrase "Где  
> эта улица? Где этот дом?" turns up all manner of  
> stuff that doesn't include the rest of the song, suggesting it's a  
> common reference. I think.
>
> So, that's what I've got. Is this some random snippet from a larger  
> work? Is it just a random song fragment that children (and their  
> parents) sing? Did grandpa replace the "b" sound with "g"?
>
> I'm the only living person in the family who can form a coherent  
> sentence in Russian, I'm not that good at it, and all of the project  
> notes are lost (and half a continent away from me anyhow,) so I have  
> no other source to go to at this point. Help, please!
>
> I believe you can get the liner notes for free on the Smithsonian  
> page, incidentally (the Russian stuff is transliterated: it looks to  
> me like the notes were typed and then photocopied, and I imagine  
> Cyrillic typewriters were in short supply in Glendale in 1982.) If  
> anyone wants to take a stab at identifying the chime song, that'd be  
> great, too; I just know it's beyond me right now.
>
> -- 
> Sarah Marie Parker-Allen
>
> parker-allen.1 at osu.edu
> http://www.smp-a.com
>
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