The Surprising Jewish Roots of Popular Anti-Fascist Anthem Bella Ciao

In recent years the song Bella Ciao has emerged as a major left-wing anthem in Europe and beyond.  Meaning “Goodbye, Beautiful,” Bella Ciao has long been known as an Italian anti-fascist partisan song from World War II.

Its lyrics describe a partisan fighter saying goodbye to his beautiful love before he goes off to fight the Nazis and Italian collaborators.  He warns his lover that he might not return.

One morning I awakened
And I found the invader
Oh partisan carry me away
Because I feel death approaching.

And if I die as a partisan
Then you must bury me.
Bury me up in the mountain
Under the shade of a beautiful flower.

And all those who shall pass
Will say ‘what a beautiful flower.’
This is the flower of the partisan
Who died for freedom.

Bella Ciao is sung each year on April 25 across Italy, on the Fiesta della Liberazione, which celebrates the end of Italy’s occupation at the end of World War II.  In recent years, however, its appeal has widened considerably.  Today, Bella Ciao is one of the most popular and widely recognizable songs worldwide.

Global Anthem for Change

In 2011, Italian protesters supporting Occupy Wall Street encampments in the United States recorded versions of Bella Ciao to encourage their American counterparts.

The following year, Belgian’s Climate Coalition used Bella Ciao when they organized “Sing for the Climate,” a mass movement where 80,000 people in 180 locations across the country sang an adaptation of the song to raise awareness about climate change.  In that version, Belgian rock singer Stef Kamil Carlens took Bella Ciao’s catchy melody and paired it with new lyrics in a version called “Do it Now.”  Since then, climate activists have sung the song at Fridays for the Future events: climate awareness gatherings originally organized by climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Bella Ciao became the anthem of anti-austerity measures in Greece in 2015.  By 2017 it was so popular that the Spanish Netflix show La Casa del Papel (Money Heist) used it as its theme, giving the song a further boost.

Argentinian protestors used Bella Ciao’s tune to protest draconian anti-abortion laws in 2018, singing Este sistema que nos prime / caera, caera, caera (“This system that oppresses us / will fall, fall, fall”).  Later, Polish protesters demonstrating for abortion rights added their own Polish wording to the catchy melody.

During Covid, Bella Ciao became an anthem for people decrying draconian restrictions and lockdowns: people sang it from their balconies across Italy and Germany.

Hong Kong protestors sang it to protest Chinese restrictions on their freedom.

In Ukraine, Bella Ciao has become “a de facto resistance anthem.” A 2022 video of two female Ukrainian soldiers singing Bella Ciao near the front lines while fighting Russia’s invasion went viral.

In Iran, Bella Ciao has become the anthem of those who protest the Morality Police’s enforcement of Islamic dress for women.  After 22-year-old Jina Amini died after being arrested and beaten for wearing her hijab incorrectly in 2022, Iranian feminists gave the tune new lyrics: “The cluster of our anger is thirsty for rain.  Our rights are now petty…  Finally, the chains of oppression will be broken by our hands….  Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao.”

More recently, Bella Ciao has been used to protest Viktor Orban, Hungarian’s pro-Russian leader. In October 2024, after Orban addressed the European Parliament, members burst into a rendition of Bella Ciao, earning a rebuke from the Parliament’s President that this “wasn’t Eurovision.”   The MEPs had made their point though: Bella Ciao has become shorthand for cries for social justice the world over.

Global Popularity

Bella Ciao is one of the world’s most popular songs.  As one culture critic describes, “from folk to punk, dance to electric, it’s everywhere.” It’s been recorded by the Italian-French singer and actor Yves Montand, by American singer Tom Waits, French-Spanish singer Manu Chao, and others.

It’s easy to see why it’s so popular. It’s catchy and upbeat. But to aficionados of Jewish music, it also has unmistakably elements of Klezmer music, the music of Eastern European Jews which is a contraction of two Hebrew words: klei (instrument) and zemer (song).

Klezmer Origins

Dozens of articles describe Bella Ciao’s unique cultural appeal, yet most shy away from the song’s true origins. Many articles assert that it originated among female Italian rice farmers in the north of Italy in the 1800s, though as Italian journalist Jenner Meletti has discovered, that version of the song is relatively recent.  In fact, Bella Ciao was originally a Jewish song, and there are several recordings from the early 1900s of this song by Klezmer musicians.

The earliest seems to be a 1919 recording of the song Koilen - “Coal” in Yiddish - by the great Klezmer and Yiddish musician Mishka Ziganoff included in an album of Yiddish swing music.

Here the history of Bella Ciao becomes even more complex.  Mishka Ziganoff wasn’t Jewish himself.  A Christian Gypsy from Odessa in Ukraine, he moved to New York City where he opened a restaurant and also worked as a musician.  At the time Ziganoff was born in,1889, Odessa was over a third Jewish. Ziganoff learned to speak Yiddish fluently, and in New York he worked and recorded music with Yiddish-speaking Klezmer bands.

Koilen was just one of many Klezmer pieces he recorded.

Koilen was simply a melody; Ziganoff’s recording has no words. It seems to be a version of an older Yiddish folk song called Dus Zekele Koilen, or “A Small Bag of Coal.”  At least two recordings of this version exist, from 1921 and 1922.  The song is a paean to the comforts of having coal to burn and being warm, and also describes the grinding poverty of Jews in Eastern Europe, for whom coal and other bare necessities seemed like luxuries.

Dus Zekele Koilen’s refrain captures this poverty:

Because coal is a pleasure
For whoever has it at hand.
Coal is very difficult to get
One must stand in line very late.  

 

It seems that the catchy tune of this Yiddish song caught on with people outside of the Jewish community. Balkan partisans adapted it during World War II as a partisan song; later on, Italian anti-fascist fighters used the tune for their own morale-boosting singing, creating the words that the world now knows as Bella Ciao and overlaying them onto Dus Zekele Koilen’s melody.

Recognizing Bella Ciao’s Jewish Origins

It’s time to remind the millions of people worldwide who’ve embraced Bella Ciao of the song’s Jewish origins. Ironically, many of the figures who’ve done so much to boost its popularity in recent years have been spewing extreme hatred against Jews and the Jewish state.

Take climate activist Greta Thunberg, who helped turn Bella Ciao into a climate anthem.  In recent years she’s shifted her activism to opposing Israel, chanting that she wants to “crush Zionism.”  Even the Belgian pop star Stef Kamil Carlens, who adapted Bella Ciao for his country’s “Sing for the Climate” event, has come out as virulently anti-Israel, calling for Israel to be barred from competing in the Eurovision song contest.

No wonder the Yiddish origins of Bella Ciao are so often ignored.  Let’s continue singing and changing Bella Ciao to suit the times, while remembering its Jewish origins as well.