"Our town is burning brothers, burning - our poor little town is burning!"

Southern California is all ablaze, half a million people evacuated and the rest of the population choked by smoke and waiting to exhale.

“Our Town is Burning”, by Mordechai Gebirtig, was written in Yiddish in 1938, after a pogrom in Przytyk (prounounced “pshitic”), Poland. It is considered extraordinarily prophetic, in that it was written before World War II and the Holocaust.

Our town is burning, brothers, burning
Our poor little town is burning.
Angry winds are fanning higher
The leaping tongues of flame and fire,
The evil winds are roaring!
Our whole town burns!

And you stand looking on with folded arms,
And shake your heads.
You stand looking on, with folded arms,
While the fire spreads!

Our town is burning, brothers, burning,
Our poor little town is burning.
Tongues of flame are leaping,
The fire through our town goes sweeping,
Through roofs and windows pouring.
All around us burns.

And you stand looking on with folded arms,
And shake your heads.
You stand looking on, with folded arms,
While the fire spreads!

Our town is burning, brothers, burning,
Any moment the fire may
Sweep the whole of our town away,
And leave only ashes, black and gray,
Life after a battle, where dead walls stand,
Broken and ruined in a desolate land.

And you stand looking on with folded arms,
And shake your heads.
You stand looking on, with folded arms,
While the fire spreads!

Our town is burning, brothers, burning,
All now depends on you.
Our only help is what you do.
You can still put out the fire
With your blood, if you desire.
Don’t look on with folded arms,
And shake your heads.
Don’t look on with folded arms
While the fire spreads.