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23 March to 15 July 2012 Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s

The Hebrew Bookstore/The Semer Record Label

Façade with front door
Building at Almstadtstr. 10, 2012 © Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Gelia Eisert

The building at Grenadierstrasse 28 in which Hirsch Lewin opened his “Hebrew Bookstore” (now Almstadtstrasse 10) still exists today. Lewin’s store was located to the right of the large entrance in the middle of the building.

Hirsch Lewin (1892–1958) was born in Vilnius and taken to Germany as a civilian prisoner during the First World War. There he was forced to work in a locomotive factory.

Lewin was released after the war and decided to remain in Berlin. He worked in the Gonzer bookstore at Grenadierstrasse 34 before opening the Hebrew Bookstore at no. 28 in 1930.

Hirsch Lewin’s store attracted a diverse Jewish clientele and stocked merchandise to suit every taste: religious works in Hebrew, history books, children’s literature, and ritual objects such as prayer shawls and Shabbat candles. One special feature was the selection of phonograph records. People spoke Yiddish, German, and Russian in the store.

Black-and-white portrait photo of a young man with a moustache in a suit
Hirsch Lewin (born Vilnius, 1892, died Israel, 1958), around 1941 © Zeev Lewin, Ramat Gan
Photo of children next to a staircase
Wolf (Zeev) Lewin (b. 1927) and Lilly Lewin (b. 1925) with the neighbors’ children in the courtyard of 28 Grenadierstrasse (Wolf far left, Lilly far right), around 1935–1939, © Zeev Lewin, Ramat Gan

In 2000, Zeev Lewin described his childhood in the Scheunenviertel neighborhood of Berlin

 “We lived in a small apartment on Grenadierstrasse in Berlin, in the middle of the Scheunenviertel, the neighborhood favored by poor Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland. There were dozens of stieblach (prayer rooms), small synagogues, kosher bakeries, groceries, and restaurants. Most of the people wore traditional clothes, caftans, and shtreimel. If it weren’t for the few German shops, you might have thought you were in a small town in Poland.”

The History of the Lewin Family, written by Zeev Lewin around 2000

Woman with a small child and a boy in the foreground
Rodla Lewin (1896–1967) with her children Wolf/Zeev (b. 1927) and Rifka (1932–2010), ca. 1932/33 © Zeev Lewin, Ramat Gan

During the November Pogrom of 1938 Hirsch Lewin’s store and all his merchandise were destroyed. Lewin was arrested in September 1939 and deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Six months later he was released on the condition that he leave Germany immediately.

Lewin first fled to Czechoslovakia. From there he attempted to secure passage with other Jewish refugees on a ship headed for Palestine. The vessel sank off the coast of Italy, but the passengers managed to survive and were interned in Italy.

Initially, the other members of the Lewin family stayed in Berlin. The family met again in 1944 in Palestine. With the support of his son Zeev, Hirsch Lewin began producing records again. After his father’s death in 1958, Zeev Lewin continued to run the company successfully.

Zeev Lewin’s Memories

»The first store at Grenadierstrasse 28 was part of the ground-floor apartment where we lived. My older sister, Lilly, my younger sister, Rifka, and I were born there. In 1930 we moved to a more spacious apartment and my parents opened a much larger store in the same building. It was divided into several rooms that contained a wide selection of new and second-hand books, Judaica, and records.... Of course, Lilly and I knew all the Yiddish and Hebrew hits and would sing them over and over again.

After many years of hard work, the shop began to flourish in the early 1930s and my parents finally enjoyed some measure of success. Their disappointment and suffering were all the greater when the Nazis destroyed what they had built up. It happened gradually. First there were increasingly severe restrictions year after year, then total ruin on the Night of Broken Glass.

A friend of my father’s called early the day of the pogrom … and urged my father to return to the safety of his apartment in the western part of Berlin. My father and I remained in the apartment the entire day and I saw my father crying. In the evening I returned to the store. From the corner Münzstrasse I saw the flames rising high in front of the Jewish shops. A large number of phonograph records and pieces of furniture were being burnt on a vast pyre in front of our store.

We were overjoyed when we all met again in July 1944 in Palestine. We were the only family inour friend's circle of Berlin friends to survive the war without losing anyone.«

Speech given by Zeev Lewin at the Centrum Judaicum on November 5, 2001

Black-and-white portrait of a man with a hat and a polka dot cravat
Hirsch Lewin in March 1941 © Zeev Lewin, Ramat Gan
Boy with glasses sitting at a desk in school
Wolf/Zeev Lewin (b. 1927) in the school on Siegmundshof run by the Adass Jisroel Congregation © Zeev Lewin, Ramat Gan

In 1932 Hirsch Lewin founded the Semer record label, which produced records until 1937. »Semer« is the Hebrew word for song.

Semer’s catalogue was extremely varied and included Yiddish hits, folk songs, opera arias, and cantorial music. The songs were sung in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Russian, and Italian.

Semer released both existing and self-produced recordings, including many by the singer Israel Bakon, a young cantor from western Galicia. Bakon recorded cantorial works, Yiddish folk songs, and a Yiddish Zionist song for the Semer label.

Zeev Lewin on »Semer«

»At first the records were imported from America but later my father started recording talented young musicians in Germany. He established the Semer label, which eventually offered a large selection of recordings. The company was successful and gramophone records became the mainstay of his business. Some of these recordings survived because a friend of my father’s who managed to emigrate to the United States took a suitcase of original recordings with him.«

The History of the Lewin Family, written by Zeev Lewin around 2000

The Yiddish folk song »Leybke fort keyn Amerike« (»Lybka Goes to America«), sung by Pinkas Lavender, is about immigration to America—a common experience for Jewish families from Eastern Europe in the 1880s and later. The song tells of Lybka, a husband and father, who forgets about his family in Europe after embarking on a new existence in America. The first and only sign of life from him is a letter in which he asks for a divorce because he wants to remarry in America.

Zeev Lewin on »Leybke fort keyn Amerike«

»We children knew all the Yiddish songs. Our favorite was ›Leybke fort keyn Amerike‹ and we sang along when we heard it. The recordings were made in a studio under the direction of the conductors Arno Nadel, Schabtai Petruschka and many others. The records were pressed by the Lindstroem company and then sent to Poland and America. We still have a letter that Lindstroem wrote to us in 1946 explaining that their factory had been bombed and, unfortunately, all the matrices had been destroyed.«

Zeev Lewin, 2012

Record label: H. Lewin—Berlin, Grenadierstr. 28— Lybka Goes to America
Pinkas Lavender, »Leybke fort keyn Amerike,« with piano accompaniment by Max Janowski, recorded around 1931 © Rainer Lotz Collection
Play »Lybka Goes to America« as an mp3 file.

Pinkas Lavender, »Leybke fort keyn Amerike,« with piano accompaniment by Max Janowski, recorded around 1931

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