Yan Frenkel singing his most famous song, "The Cranes," in 1982:

Born Jewish in Kiev, Frenkel died in Riga in 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Cranes

Sometimes I feel like the soldiers,
Who never returned from the bloodied fields,
Aren't perished in our earth,
But turned into white cranes

Since those long gone times until today
They fly and give us signs, so we can hear them.
Isn't this why so frequently and sorrowfully
We fall silent, watching the sky?

A tired flock is flying, flying up in the sky,
Through the fog, at the end of the day.
And among them there's a small gap,
Perhaps that's the place for me

The day will come when together with the cranes
I will float in that same blue-gray mist,
With a bird's hailing out of the heavens,
Calling on all of you, whom I've had left down on earth.

Sometimes I feel like the soldiers,
Who never returned from the bloodied fields,
Aren't perished in our earth,
But turned into white cranes