This November, local singer-songwriter Rachel Black releases the commercial CD of her much talked-about original song, “Edyka,” and launches her new independent label, Harmony Hope Records. “Edyka” tells the story of her grandmother’s harrowing escape from a Nazi boxcar destined for the Treblinka death camp, sung from the perspective of Black’s great-grandmother, who pushed her daughter out of a vent at the top of the moving boxcar.
In addition to her duties as the executive director of the Americana Music Academy in Lawrence, Black is a cantorial soloist who has sung at various area synagogues. She is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston and has been writing songs since the age of 16. The CD release of “Edyka” is a culmination of a journey that began in the spring of 2018.
As a member of the third generation of Holocaust survivors, Black was raised knowing her grandparents’ story as a dark topic never openly spoken of. All of that changed when Rabbi Debbie Stiel of Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka asked her to share her family’s story. Black knew it was time to speak up. It impacted all who heard of the harrowing escape.
The Temple Beth Sholom presentation led to Black being asked to be the keynote speaker for the 2018 State of Kansas Holocaust Commemoration in Topeka on April 9, 2018. While preparing for the presentation, Rachel became inspired to write “Edyka” — her grandmother’s nickname — completing it in one hour at midnight. She performed it at the piano at the end of her Kansas Holocaust Commemoration keynote.
On April 29 the song was featured at “Spring Session” held annually at Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park, which showcases the original works of Jewish songwriters and musicians. The song arrangement by Black along with Emily Tummons featured back-up vocals, piano, guitar, bass guitar, cello and violin. Black was unprepared for the outpouring of response to “Edyka.” Friends and colleagues began urging her to record it.
It was not long before syndicated stories about the song ran in papers around the country, beginning with the Kansas City Star (May 10), and including the Miami Herald and U.S. News and World Report, to name a few. The Star noted: “Rachel Black almost always writes in a plaintive minor key, but the Lawrence singer knew that this personal piece … cried out to be written in a major key. To Black that’s the sound of bravery, hope and a mother’s sacrificial love.”
Black and the Spring Session band recorded the song at Markosa Studios in Roeland Park. A downloadable digital recording of the song was released by CD Baby in August (store.cdbaby.com/cd/rachelblack2). But requests for an actual physical CD poured in.
The Suzanna Cohen Legacy Foundation sponsored the first printing of the CD and released it Oct. 15 at a special Holocaust legacy event sponsored by the foundation at the National Press Club in the District of Columbia, at which Black performed the song. This was a homecoming of sorts for the singer who grew up in the D.C. area in Rockville, Maryland.
The “Edyka” CD will be released in the Kansas City area on Nov. 4 at an event held at Congregation Ohev Sholom in Praairie Village where her father Edwin Black is the scholar-in-residence, Nov. 2–4. (For more about Edwin Black’s appearances in the area, see page 5.)
Black’s grandparents are both Polish Holocaust survivors, born Herschel Lipa and Edjya Katz. Lipa stepped out of line when Nazis were marching the Jewish population of his Polish village to their death. He jumped into the driver’s seat of a horse-drawn wagon pretending to be the driver and escaped into the woods. Under cover of darkness, he joined a Jewish Resistance group — the partisans — that bravely fought Nazis and rescued other Jews.
One night he was ordered to properly bury a group of Jews who had been ambushed and killed when they were discovered hiding in a farmer’s barn. He saw a leg moving in the shallow grave, jumped in and pulled out an unconscious girl who had been hiding in that barn after her escape from the train. He nursed Edjya back to health and the pair survived hiding in the forest until the end of the war.
After a stay in a displaced persons camp in Germany, the couple immigrated to America, took on their American names Harry and Ethel Black and settled in Chicago, where Rachel Black’s father was born shortly after their arrival. Black’s parents, who are both writers, have written extensively about the family’s history, but the singer’s first entre into preserving the family’s Holocaust story, was composing that haunting song — “Edyka.”
Not unlike another third generation survivor, filmmaker Leah Warshawski, who used her art to tell her grandmother’s story in the film “Big Sonia,” Black knew it was her generation’s turn to speak out, lest the world forget.
The CD cover and insert art, designed by the singer’s mother, Elizabeth Black, features a period photo of Edyka taken in the displaced persons camp after the war, as well as a haunting photo of the singer’s great-grandmother Fanya Katz, who saved her daughter’s life, but perished in the Holocaust.
The “Edyka” CD is available for purchase for $5. It will be on sale Nov. 4 at Ohev Sholom thereafter in several area gift shops. It may be preordered by emailing a request to or writing to Harmony Hope Records, c/o Americana Music Academy, 1419 Massachusetts St., Lawrence, KS 66044.