Yankl Trupyanski was born in Vilna in 1909 and worked as a music teacher and composer of children’s songs in Warsaw and Vilna.  He composed many of the songs sung by children in the Yiddish schools of the inter-war years, including the Warsaw Tsisho schools and Medem Sanitorium.  With the outbreak of World War II, he returned to his home city and was a member of the leftist group the ‘Socialist Revolutionaries’.  In the Vilna ghetto he continued to compose songs, including ‘Es vet zikh fun tsvaygl tseblien a boym’ (From a twig will grow a tree), as well as a popular operetta performed in the ghetto theatre in January 1943.

During the liquidation of the ghetto, he and his brother were deported to a concentration camp, where Yankl Trupyanski died in 1944.

Sources

Fater, Y., 1970. Yidishe muzik in poyln tsvishn beyde velt-milkohmes, Tel Aviv: Velt federatsye fun poylishe yidn.  

Katsherginski, S. & Leivick, H. eds., Lider fun di Getos un Lagern, New York: Alveltlekher Yidisher Kultur-Kongres.