Just a few months ago I lamented that the memory of the legendary Ukrainian tango composer from Ukrane, known in Argentina as "Saverio Sadan", is lost to the ravages of time. His "Gitana Rusa", composed in 1940, soon took Argentine by storm - but the fiddler and composer was no longer around to learn about its success.
The "Russian gypsy girl", as "Gitana rusa" is translated, has a heart-wrenching story. Its author, a violin player from Uman in Ukraine (whose real name was guessed to be Savely Zhadan) was murdered along with the rest of the town's Jews in the mass executions of the "Holocaust by bullets" in the fall 1941. Zhadan's son lived in Buenos Aires. I read that his mom took the boy to Argentina, supposedly in 1921, and that the son of the Ukrainian musician, remembered as Demetrio Sadan in Argentina, grew up to become a banking executive (the reality turned out to be more exciting and more mysterious - read on!). The story went on that when Demetrio fell in love for his secretary Celia, his dad sent him a unique wedding gift: a tango entitled "Your eyes" ("Tus ojos") and dedicated to "beautiful Celia". The musical score had to be smuggled out of the USSR with a friendly merchant marine sailor through the port of Odessa, It arrived late for the wedding, in the end - and it doesn't seem like the groom had much appreciation for the music, even his father's music, anyway. But as the year 1941 dragged on, Demetrio had a clear premonition that his father was no longer alive. At some point, he must have decided to pass Saverio's creation into good hands.
The tango poet Horacio Basterra Sanginetti, a tragic genius of the Castellano verse, rewrote the lyrics of Sadan's tango in Spanish, staying true both to the original title and to the aura of fate born by Sadan's score in the opening lines of the letras: "You eyes are colored jet-black by the pain of suffering". The song goes on about parting forever, about death, sorrow, and the snow-covered steppe...
I must add that there are few tango personalities more mysterious than Horacio Sanginetti. Not a single photograph is known of this poet of "Nada", “Alhucema”, “Liula la misteriosa”, “María Morena”, “El barrio del tambor”, “Macumba”, and “Corazón de tambor”. Doomed to exile, Horacio Sanginetti died in complete oblivion on the age of 43.
But the composer of "Gitana rusa" was a far greater mystery... we didn't even know his real name. Argentine Saverio is a variation of Xavier, but the historians assumed that it really stood for a similar-sounding Russian name Savely (Saul). I would have guessed that the actual name was Shevel. That's how the name of the first Israeli Kind Saul sounded in Yiddish. My own great great grandfather bore this name, which meant "prayed for" or"blessed". But the answer to this riddle was hidden in the death-pits of the Holocaust.
Nevertheless, the digital age of the XXI century returns the lost names to life, bit by bit. And today, I spotted the name of the musician in the digitized vital records of Cherkassy Regional Archive. This is the August 1922 record of Zhadan's 2nd marriage:
His name is indeed Shevel Zhadan, son of Israel. He is a teacher at the municipal music school, residing at the Catholic Church Street #5, Shevel is born in 1890 (and we know that he was murdered by the Nazis in 1941). It must be noted that the residence, and the school, still stand (and look as if they didn't have renovations in the 100 years which passed).
Yet I still couldn't find any trace of Demetrio Sadan in Argentina. I used to think that I need to search post-1924 arrivals (since that's when the US slapped its punitive quotas on the Eastern European immigration, and the refugees from Ukraine were re-routed to South America). But even in the early 1920s, searching CEMLA database yielded nothing. Headstone searches, nothing either. Something must have been incorrect about Demetrio's name? Then the light bulb went on: it wasn't a poor family, so perhaps they vacationed in Brazil (and Brazilian immigration cards have been thoroughly digitized). And there I discovered that the musician's son wasn't a Demetrio Sadan, but rather Demetrio Zadán. The S and the Z don't sound any different from one another in Spanish there... His wife was Celia Herminia Piva. The oldest daughter, Angelica Maria Victoria Zadán was born in September 1939 (you can appreciate just how long it took for the news of Demetrio's wedding to rich his father in Ukraine! ). Monica Celia Victoria Zadán in NYC is the youngest of 3 daughters. The 2nd daughter, Alicia Ida Victoria Zadán, was born in 1942 and I can't resist adding at least one of their numerous immigration cards here. Isn't she adorable?
Having uncovered all that, I got a feeling that I already read somewhere about the Cáceres connection of "Gitana rusa". Another search and ... I grew speechless! It was right there in late Julio Nudler's 1998 book about the Jewish roots and personalities of Argentine tango. Yes, it was Juan Carlos Cáceres himself who showed Nudler the five yellowed pages of Shaul Zhadan's score, dated August 10, 1940. And Cáceres explained right then how he got into possession of this relic: that Demetrio Zadán was his father-in law! Demetrio the redhead newspaper editor and a friend of the poet Horacio Basterra (who signed his tango's "Sanguinetti"), explained Cáceres. Not some culture-averse financier as I read elsewhere. My interest was piqued.
The Uman-born son of Shevel Zhadan turned out to be a bright and outrageous journalist and poet, going by nickname Mitia (which is Russian diminutive for Dmitry - Demetrio). He cut his reporter's teeth as a teenage new immigrant under the mentorship of Jorge Luis Borges. The famous author, poet and culturologist worked then as an executive editor of a Saturday section of Crítica. Mitia Zadán joined the paper in June 1929, right out of high school. It was a very unusual paper, in some ways a tabloid with its 300,000 circulation and a gaudy colored design, but at the same time a conduit of high culture directed towards the wide masses of the porteños. The autobiographic sketch of "Mitia" Zadán's first days in journalism appeared there, too, as did his "Streets of Buenos Aires".
At the same time Demetrio-Mitia participated in the leftist youth's avant-garde magazine "Brújula" ("Compass"), "the monthly of arts and ideas", wrote poetry, and even published, in 1936, "Trapecio" - "a guide to the BsAs brothels in verse". No wonder he was friends with the great and scandalous tango poet Sanguinetti, who rewrote the lyrics of "Gitana rusa" and found the musicians willing to give the Ukrainian tango a try!
The details of little Mitia's long trip from Uman to Argentina turned out to be different, and more mysterious, than I thought, too. According to the family, mom abandoned him (and his father) just months after his birth, and went to Argentina. But the WWI flared up and separated the mother from her baby for nearly a decade! At last, the mother, who was by then happily married, sent for her redhead boy. The sources usually say that Demetrio was born in 1910, but sometimes, in 1912. I wondered if I could tell with more certainty about his parents and his birth from the vital records of Uman. Yet the mystery only deepened. I couldn't find his birth record in the Jewish books - but I discovered that Shevel Zhadan had a different boy with his legal wife - a different woman - in July 1913!
Shevel Zhadan's son Israel, born July 7, 1913, was named after Shevel's deceased father. He went to school in Uman, and in WWII escaped the Nazi offensive which killed his father and was called up for the Battle of Stalingrad. Israel Mikhail Zhadan served in anti-tank artillery and survived the deadly assault on Mamayev Kurgan, the blood-soaked hill overlooking Stalingrad's downtown, and the sweeping attack on Italian and Romanian auxiliaries of Wehrmacht on river Don West of town. But on January 17, 1943 his 6th Guards Army encountered stiff resistance of the regrouped Germans on the outskirts of Rostov. Israel Zhadan was grievously wounded and died in a military hospital 3 months later.
Israel was a son of Mirlya Zhadan, who acccording to the records was the first of the two legal wives of of Shevel Zhadan (he was a widower when he remarried in 1922). But whose son was "Mitia", then? It sounds like his parents weren't legally married before the break-up. Occasionally, I encountered "illegitimate" births in the Jewish vital books, but it didn't occur to me to check them. And, although cross-confession marriages weren't allowed then, the non-Jewish name Demetrio leaves open a possibility that his mom was Christian and, therefore, that his birth was recorded in different confession's books? Either way, if it was officially an illegitimate birth of a soon-abandoned child, then little Mitia could only have acquired his biological father's surname later, after the Bolshevik Revolution, when these possibilities opened up. The mysteries don't end,,,
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| The town of Uman is famous for its 220 years old landlord Potocki's park |
The "Russian gypsy girl", as "Gitana rusa" is translated, has a heart-wrenching story. Its author, a violin player from Uman in Ukraine (whose real name was guessed to be Savely Zhadan) was murdered along with the rest of the town's Jews in the mass executions of the "Holocaust by bullets" in the fall 1941. Zhadan's son lived in Buenos Aires. I read that his mom took the boy to Argentina, supposedly in 1921, and that the son of the Ukrainian musician, remembered as Demetrio Sadan in Argentina, grew up to become a banking executive (the reality turned out to be more exciting and more mysterious - read on!). The story went on that when Demetrio fell in love for his secretary Celia, his dad sent him a unique wedding gift: a tango entitled "Your eyes" ("Tus ojos") and dedicated to "beautiful Celia". The musical score had to be smuggled out of the USSR with a friendly merchant marine sailor through the port of Odessa, It arrived late for the wedding, in the end - and it doesn't seem like the groom had much appreciation for the music, even his father's music, anyway. But as the year 1941 dragged on, Demetrio had a clear premonition that his father was no longer alive. At some point, he must have decided to pass Saverio's creation into good hands.
The tango poet Horacio Basterra Sanginetti, a tragic genius of the Castellano verse, rewrote the lyrics of Sadan's tango in Spanish, staying true both to the original title and to the aura of fate born by Sadan's score in the opening lines of the letras: "You eyes are colored jet-black by the pain of suffering". The song goes on about parting forever, about death, sorrow, and the snow-covered steppe...I must add that there are few tango personalities more mysterious than Horacio Sanginetti. Not a single photograph is known of this poet of "Nada", “Alhucema”, “Liula la misteriosa”, “María Morena”, “El barrio del tambor”, “Macumba”, and “Corazón de tambor”. Doomed to exile, Horacio Sanginetti died in complete oblivion on the age of 43.
But the composer of "Gitana rusa" was a far greater mystery... we didn't even know his real name. Argentine Saverio is a variation of Xavier, but the historians assumed that it really stood for a similar-sounding Russian name Savely (Saul). I would have guessed that the actual name was Shevel. That's how the name of the first Israeli Kind Saul sounded in Yiddish. My own great great grandfather bore this name, which meant "prayed for" or"blessed". But the answer to this riddle was hidden in the death-pits of the Holocaust.
Nevertheless, the digital age of the XXI century returns the lost names to life, bit by bit. And today, I spotted the name of the musician in the digitized vital records of Cherkassy Regional Archive. This is the August 1922 record of Zhadan's 2nd marriage:
His name is indeed Shevel Zhadan, son of Israel. He is a teacher at the municipal music school, residing at the Catholic Church Street #5, Shevel is born in 1890 (and we know that he was murdered by the Nazis in 1941). It must be noted that the residence, and the school, still stand (and look as if they didn't have renovations in the 100 years which passed).
May his soul be bound in the bonds of life.
ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
ת.נ.צ.ב.ה
Yet I still couldn't find any trace of Demetrio Sadan in Argentina. I used to think that I need to search post-1924 arrivals (since that's when the US slapped its punitive quotas on the Eastern European immigration, and the refugees from Ukraine were re-routed to South America). But even in the early 1920s, searching CEMLA database yielded nothing. Headstone searches, nothing either. Something must have been incorrect about Demetrio's name? Then the light bulb went on: it wasn't a poor family, so perhaps they vacationed in Brazil (and Brazilian immigration cards have been thoroughly digitized). And there I discovered that the musician's son wasn't a Demetrio Sadan, but rather Demetrio Zadán. The S and the Z don't sound any different from one another in Spanish there... His wife was Celia Herminia Piva. The oldest daughter, Angelica Maria Victoria Zadán was born in September 1939 (you can appreciate just how long it took for the news of Demetrio's wedding to rich his father in Ukraine! ). Monica Celia Victoria Zadán in NYC is the youngest of 3 daughters. The 2nd daughter, Alicia Ida Victoria Zadán, was born in 1942 and I can't resist adding at least one of their numerous immigration cards here. Isn't she adorable?
This Alicia Zadán, an artist, married Juan Carlos Cáceres in Paris, and co-organized his Tango Negro events with him. All the billboards of Tango Negro are Alicia's designs! (I'm attaching a video of her interview to the Spanish language service Radio France, given soon after her husband's death). This stuff just makes me speechless. Wow, don't these tango genes skip a generation sometimes?
Having uncovered all that, I got a feeling that I already read somewhere about the Cáceres connection of "Gitana rusa". Another search and ... I grew speechless! It was right there in late Julio Nudler's 1998 book about the Jewish roots and personalities of Argentine tango. Yes, it was Juan Carlos Cáceres himself who showed Nudler the five yellowed pages of Shaul Zhadan's score, dated August 10, 1940. And Cáceres explained right then how he got into possession of this relic: that Demetrio Zadán was his father-in law! Demetrio the redhead newspaper editor and a friend of the poet Horacio Basterra (who signed his tango's "Sanguinetti"), explained Cáceres. Not some culture-averse financier as I read elsewhere. My interest was piqued.The Uman-born son of Shevel Zhadan turned out to be a bright and outrageous journalist and poet, going by nickname Mitia (which is Russian diminutive for Dmitry - Demetrio). He cut his reporter's teeth as a teenage new immigrant under the mentorship of Jorge Luis Borges. The famous author, poet and culturologist worked then as an executive editor of a Saturday section of Crítica. Mitia Zadán joined the paper in June 1929, right out of high school. It was a very unusual paper, in some ways a tabloid with its 300,000 circulation and a gaudy colored design, but at the same time a conduit of high culture directed towards the wide masses of the porteños. The autobiographic sketch of "Mitia" Zadán's first days in journalism appeared there, too, as did his "Streets of Buenos Aires".
At the same time Demetrio-Mitia participated in the leftist youth's avant-garde magazine "Brújula" ("Compass"), "the monthly of arts and ideas", wrote poetry, and even published, in 1936, "Trapecio" - "a guide to the BsAs brothels in verse". No wonder he was friends with the great and scandalous tango poet Sanguinetti, who rewrote the lyrics of "Gitana rusa" and found the musicians willing to give the Ukrainian tango a try!The details of little Mitia's long trip from Uman to Argentina turned out to be different, and more mysterious, than I thought, too. According to the family, mom abandoned him (and his father) just months after his birth, and went to Argentina. But the WWI flared up and separated the mother from her baby for nearly a decade! At last, the mother, who was by then happily married, sent for her redhead boy. The sources usually say that Demetrio was born in 1910, but sometimes, in 1912. I wondered if I could tell with more certainty about his parents and his birth from the vital records of Uman. Yet the mystery only deepened. I couldn't find his birth record in the Jewish books - but I discovered that Shevel Zhadan had a different boy with his legal wife - a different woman - in July 1913!
 |
| Motherland Monument at Mamayev Kurgan |
Israel was a son of Mirlya Zhadan, who acccording to the records was the first of the two legal wives of of Shevel Zhadan (he was a widower when he remarried in 1922). But whose son was "Mitia", then? It sounds like his parents weren't legally married before the break-up. Occasionally, I encountered "illegitimate" births in the Jewish vital books, but it didn't occur to me to check them. And, although cross-confession marriages weren't allowed then, the non-Jewish name Demetrio leaves open a possibility that his mom was Christian and, therefore, that his birth was recorded in different confession's books? Either way, if it was officially an illegitimate birth of a soon-abandoned child, then little Mitia could only have acquired his biological father's surname later, after the Bolshevik Revolution, when these possibilities opened up. The mysteries don't end,,,
