David Werdyger

Werdyger sang on two Shabbos with the Werdygers collections produced by his son, Chaim. In 1997, he contributed cantorial renditions for the PBS documentary A Life Apart: Hasidism in America.

In 1993 Werdyger published his autobiography, Songs of Hope, as part of the Holocaust Diaries series published by CIS Publishers.

Following the death of his wife in 1980, Werdyger married Sarah Wercberger, widow of Wolf Wercberger and daughter of Rabbi Osher Zelig Marton, a dayan and shochet in pre-war Romania.

After that Werdyger started his own recording label, Aderet Records, to record Hasidic niggunim (melodies). He released Songs of the Gerer Chassidim Loi Sevoishi in 1962. His next album was A Melitzer Oneg Shabbos. His third album, A Gerer Melava Malka, featured a solo by his young son, Mordechai. Subsequently, Werdyger recorded the niggunim of the Skulener Rebbe, Rabbi Eliezer Zusia Portugal, on Skulaner Chassidic Nigunim Vol. 1 and Skulaner Nigunim 2, and of the Bobover Rebbe, Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam, on Bobover Niggunim.

Later, Werdyger moved to the Rabbi Meir Simcha Hakohein Shul in East Flatbush, headed by Chabad, Jacob J. Hecht, who had Werdyger sing cantorial selections on his weekly radio program, Shema Yisrael. In 1959 Werdyger made his first record, Tefillah L'David. In 1960 he recorded another album, Mizmor LeDavid.

After the war Werdyger married Malka Godinger. Several months later they left for Paris, France, where they had a son. Four years later, in February 1950, they sailed to New York.

Werdyger was an inmate in the Płaszów for five months, after which he was transferred to the nearby factory under the direction of Oskar Schindler. He also spent time in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and the Linz labor camp, where he was liberated on Saturday, 5 May 1945.

With the Nazi occupation of Poland in September 1939, Werdyger was subject to frequent arrests and forced labor on the streets of Kraków. In the summer of 1940, when the Nazis ordered all Jews to leave the city, Werdyger's family moved to an uncle's home in Proszowice. In response to rumors of a mass deportation, he, his unmarried sister Yettie, and his parents went into hiding with 16 others in a bunker in their uncle's warehouse, where they were cared for by a Polish employee. Three weeks later, they sneaked into the Podgórze ghetto of Kraków. From there, his parents bought their way out of the ghetto into Sosnowice, where one of their married daughters was living and never saw them again.

David Werdyger (Hebrew: אלתר דוד יצחק ורדיגר; 30 October 1919 – 2 April 2014) was a Polish-American Hasidic hazzan and solo singer. A Holocaust survivor who was incarcerated in several Nazi concentration camps, including the factory run by Oskar Schindler, Werdyger moved to Brooklyn, New York, after World War II and began recording albums featuring the music of the Bobov, Boyan, Skulen, Melitz, Radomsk, and Ger Hasidic dynasties, recording 60 albums in all. He also established the Jewish record label Aderet Records, now managed and owned by his son Mendy Werdyger.