A listener remembers Tsuris bay Laytn

Dear Henry Sapoznik,

...It was for my wife and myself a true pleasure to hear Nahum Stutchkoff's wonderful programs on WEVD, which reflected Jewish life in the Golden Land.

Hearing his voice again transports me back to the day when we disembarked from the ship that had transported us from the DP camps of Germany to the Golden Land, Ameritchka.

When we heard Nahum Stutchkoff's Tsuris bay Laytn, with its rich Yiddish language, it rang so true on the radio that it warmed our hearts! Am Yisroel Chai. The Yiddish language lives and thrives in America, we thought. Not everything was wiped out by the Auschwitzes.

However, I must say that listening to the dialogs immediately made me sad. Why? Nahum Stutchkoff was a phenomenal person, a great intellect, a gifted sophisticated writer and folklorist, and an outstanding talent who, already in the 1930s and 1940s found the time to write his radio dramas (his "operas" if you will) and linguistic works of such a high degree.

But in the shows, old folks (European born) spoke a tasty Yiddish sprinkled with Hebrew and even a little English. Those of the first generation spoke less Yiddish but understood a lot. Their children, of the next generation, understood a little but could only speak English. This powerful transformation was captured in the dialogs of Tsuris bay Laytn, which Stutchkoff ably and brilliantly wrote in the 1950s...

With the best and biggest respect,

I remain,

Your Michl

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