I C A NN O T F O R G E T
THE ACTION IN THE GHETTO OF ROHATYN, MARCH 1942.
by Alexander Kimel- Holocaust Survivor.
Do I want to remember?
The peaceful ghetto, before the raid:
Children shaking like leaves in the wind.
Mothers searching for a piece of bread.
Shadows, on swollen legs, moving with fear.
No, I don't want to remember, but how can I forget?
Do I want to remember, the creation of hell?
The shouts of the Raiders, enjoying the hunt.
Cries of the wounded, begging for life.
Faces of mothers carved with pain.
Hiding Children, dripping with fear.
No, I don't want to remember, but how can I forget?
Do I want to remember, my fearful return?
Families vanished in the midst of the day.
The mass grave steaming with vapor of blood.
Mothers searching for children in vain.
The pain of the ghetto, cuts like a knife.
No, I don't want to remember, but how can I forget?
Do I want to remember, the wailing of the night?
The doors kicked ajar, ripped feathers floating the air.
The night scented with snow-melting blood.
While the compassionate moon, is showing the way.
For the faceless shadows, searching for kin.
No, I don't want to remember, but I cannot forget.
Do I want to remember this world upside down?
Where the departed are blessed with an instant death.
While the living condemned to a short wretched life,
And a long tortuous journey into unnamed place,
Converting Living Souls, into ashes and gas.
No. I Have to Remember and Never Let You Forget.
THE CREED OF A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR
by Alexander Kimel
I do believe, with all my heart,
In the natural Goodness of Man.
Despite the blood and destruction,
Brought by one man, trying to be God,
In the Goodness of Man, I do believe.
I do believe, with all my heart,
That God gave man the blessing and the curse.
Man can select the curse of envy, hatred and prejudices,
Or the blessing of love, harmony and beauty.
Despite the painful curses of the past,
In the blessing of the Creator, I do believe.
I do believe, with all my heart,
That God created a beautiful world,
The sun and the trees, the flowers and the bees.
And the best way to serve God, is
To enjoy the fruits of His labor of love.
Despite the painful memories from the past,
In the joyful celebration of life, I do believe.
I do believe with all my heart,
That God has created man in image of His own.
And killing of man, is like killing of God.
Despite the massacres in Rwanda, the cleansing in Bosnia,
The folly of Muslim fanatics, and the cruelty of Pot Pol.
In the love and compassion of the Creator, I do believe.
I believe with all my heart,
That the Messiah and the Kingdom of Heaven will come;
When man will conquer his destructive urge,
And learn how to live in harmony with nature and himself.
When all the preachers of hate will be silenced,
And man will become his brother's keeper.
When man will stop killing man, in the name of God,
And nation will not lift weapons against nation.
When it will be, I do not know, but
Despite all the signs to the contrary.
In the dawn of a Better World, I do believe.
The Ghetto Prayer
by Janusz Korczak
Our Father who art in heaven. . .
This prayer was carved out of hunger and misery.
Our daily bread.
Bread.
AFTERMATH
by Evelyn Roman - Holocaust Survivor
Fifty years after the fact
Painful memories intact
Nightmares recurring,
Nazis appearing.
Must survivors remain
At their altar of pain
Forever enduring
Unspeakable haunting?
And will it subside
On life's other side
Or go on persisting
Into the realm of night
UNANSWERED....?
by DUNIO BERNHAUT
Will I always remember?
Can I ever forget
Or is the sentence perpetual and conclusively set?
Will the memories dwindle?
Can the torment subside
Or is the cycle relentless as the flow of the tide?
Will sadness release me?
Can I ever know joy
Or is fate still unfolding some merciless ploy?
Will somebody know me?
Can I be seen through the haze
Or is the image evasive, an intricate maze?
Will my life serve a purpose?
Was it carefully planned
Or is destiny adding one more granule of sand?
Like shadowy visions concealing in fear
Most answers elusive, opaque and unclear
But these so translucent through a shroud of regret:
Yes, I will always remember; No, I can never forget....
GHETTO UPRISING-LACHVA, POLAND
September 3, 1942
Evelyn Roman - Holocaust Survivor
The last September morning
Without a miracle from above
From his invisible being
Or from the world below
Abandoned, we were doomed
Our ghetto was to be consumed.
The sun rose blood red that morning
Ever faithful to its course
Shamefully it went on shining
While death was waiting at our doors
That day of judgment
Our fateful moment.
Jews an uprising staging
Germans caught by surprise
Ghetto house blazing
Eight Nazis killed
Barbed wire stormed
Few of us survived.
All visions were ending
Gone was all hope
Cruelty was raging
In unimaginable scope
Good bye childhood dreams
And times yet to be.
The chaos this morning
The murder of my kin
When torment meant living
Days cruel beyond words
With no time for grieving
While roaming the woods
I often was heartened
By the love they imparted
Their piercing screams resounding
Recurring in my brain
Time can never heal
The gnawing pain that I feel .
*Monument at Moriah
by Evelyn Roman- Holocaust Survivor
There stands a monument
In memory of the innocent
Children huddled together
Rigid with terror
Peering through the windows,
They never can enter.
Like devout processional
Of a holy funeral
The throng winds its way
Bells suspend in the breeze
Endless Kaddish prayers say.
The oven doors were open wide,
The world slept through this horrid rite.
Forsaken, left to their own device
A million children lost their lives.
Through Spring returns year by year,
From death new life can never rise.
These hollow mute stone forms
This courtyard now adorn,
Their each and every size
To sounds of bells gives rise
"Keep your faith" they whisper
"And thus avenge our demise."
These bells toll for the living
Reverberating through the head
"As long as you go on remembering
We shall endure as living dead,
Make it your vigil now
And pas it on ahead."
* Inspired by the sculpture garden at the Moriah School in
Engelwood, N.J., the work of an Israeli sculptor Edward T.
Gordon. It is a monument erected in memory of the children who
died in the Holocaust. It consists of 50 stone - bronze pieces,
in various sizes, placed in a sunken courtyard. Each has a
smooth interior window-heart containing a cast chime of a
different size, form and tone.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET – AUSCHWITZ
by Alexander Kimel - Holocaust Survivor
We will never forget the selections at Auschwitz,
Where Black Jackals condemned millions to gas,
Right - death, left - life, right death... death ...death.
The black finger, surrounded with barking dogs,
Works like the Angel of Death, creating living hell.
Children are torn apart from the tender embrace
Of mothers, clinging to their treasures.
Babies wailing from hunger,
Parents parting tearfully with their children.
Fathers shaken with helpless rage.
The condemned form a column of trembling fear.
Soon the mass of fainting humanity
Is lead to the clean foyer of death.
Disrobe quickly, take a shower and you will be fed.
Food! Food! The hungry mass of disoriented humanity
Awakens runs and fights to get into the chamber of gas.
The heavy door closes and the cyclone dropped.
Soon the parents choke and turn blue,
Later the children turn rigid with death
The people become a twisted load,
Of intertwined limps and heads glued with blood.
When the human pulp is ready for the works,
Sondercommando quickly pull,
The bodies apart, peel the gold from the mouths.
And the remains are taken to the open pit,
Where the bones are cleaned with fire,
And the fat drained for human soap.
Six days a week the Jackals drink beer,
And rejoice doing the Devil's work.
Sunday is the day of rest, the day
When the Jackals ride to the Church, to praise God
And assure the Salvation of their pious souls.
Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles!
In this Kingdom of Evil,
There is no peace for the Righteous.
It is the wicked that inherited
This tortured World, engulfed
In the red, milky, cry-absorbing fog,
Guarding the wilted conscience of man.
Holocaust
by Sudeep Pagedar
- Selected Poems
How do you
explain that term
to a tenyear old boy
who, one day,
hears it mentioned
by some relatives?
And even if
you do manage
to make him
understand what it
actually does mean,
do you also
tell him that
because he is
A GERMAN JEW,
perhaps, some day,
he might be
included in it...?
Or should he
just not be
told, so that
he remains calm
and doesn't lose
sleep over it?
But what is sleep,
in front of death?
Perhaps Death is greater,
perhaps the two are the same;
we do not know yet
but we'll know, by the end of the day;
the Chambers are yet some hours away.
"To die, to sleep...to sleep, perchance to
dream..."
How did Shakespeare realise that?
Did he know some Jew
who was persecuted too?
Perhaps he was wrong,
maybe he was right...
Anyway, I suspect we'll find out
by tonight.
Holocaust
by Barbara Sonek
We played, we laughed
we were loved.
We were ripped from the arms of our
parents and thrown into the fire.
We were nothing more than children.
We had a future. We were going to be lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers. We had
dreams, then we had no hope. We were taken away in the dead of night like cattle in cars, no
air to breathe smothering, crying, starving, dying. Separated from the world to be no more.
From the ashes, hear our plea. This atrocity to mankind can not happen again. Remember us,
for we were the children whose dreams and lives were stolen away.
Frozen Jews
Avrom Sutzkever
July 10, 1944
Have you seen, in fields of snow, frozen Jews, row on row?
Blue marble forms lying, not breathing, not dying.
Somewhere a flicker of a frozen soul - glint of fish in an icy swell.
All brood. Speech and silence are one. Night snow encases the sun.
A smile glows immobile from a rose lip's chill.
Baby and mother, side by side. Odd that her nipple's dried.
Fist, fixed in ice, of a naked old man: the power's undone in his hand.
I've sampled death in all guises. Nothing surprises.
Yet a frost in July in this heat - a crazy assault in the street.
I and blue carrion, face to face. Frozen Jews in a snowy space.
Marble shrouds my skin. Words ebb. Light grows thin.
I'm frozen, I'm rooted in place like the naked old man enfeebled by ice.
One poem by an unidentified Ghetto Poet.
Translated from the Polish by Yala Korwin.
Do you remember? But enough . . . Also
there
Prussian boots trample the acacias.
A Night in the Hut
You come at night, the hut spins
On waves of stench, dream, musing,
Your shadow wears a delicate scent
Of perfume, climbs the ladder.
Be careful, Love! The mattress is filthy,
The air foul, and all these people
Sprawled around, wrapped up in
nightmares . . .
You brush it off: Don’t think of it,
One can be alone in a crowd.
Your blue eyes shine . . . I shudder
And take your hand in mine.
. . . Love, I wouldn’t have invited you
To such strange bachelor’s quarters.
From my plank-bed, through the grate-like
panes,
You can see the roll call square . . .
There, each stone offends us . . . each stone .
..
But do not tremble at the sight,
And do not rush to Paris in your thoughts.
The Germans are raging in the Quartier
Latin.
The moon laughs stupidly in the sky,
As in a grotesque modern play.
It shone like that, once . . . stop, my Love,
Don’t exhaust your memory . . . no, don’t!
The Germans are getting drunk in
Montmartre.
In Kraków, our most beloved city,
Chestnuts are blooming, and acacias.
In the Planty,[*] then, after we talked . . .
Put your arms round my neck,
Don’t think of anything, my Love,
Be as you used to be, when tired,
But lively and strong, you were coming
To disarm, with kisses and talks,
The steep rampart of questions
Constructed in your head by books,
Microscope, and passion.
And now I will take you in my arms,
Slowly carry you down to the floor,
Softly lead you out of the hut.
Before you go your way, we will tarry
At the threshold. With a glance
You will open your heart to the night.
The distance will call you by your name,
Wind will ruffle your tawny hair.
You will leave with trust lighting up your
face
That in Kraków, Paris, and everywhere else
Streets will blast with the dynamite of
freedom,
Though you are no more, and I will be no
more.
* Public gardens in Cracow
Two poems by M.B., an unknown ghetto poet.
Translated from the Polish by Yala Korwin.
My Heart's Wall of Concrete
My heart’s wall of concrete hardened,
Thoughts weigh each detail without selfpity.
Do not expect to see a tear in my eye,
I will not bribe death with a single spasm.
Driven to “the sands” [*] from the camp’s
plank-beds,
My dearest friends’ fiery outcry is silence.
Their naked bodies, which no one will
count,
Cover stratum of torments, like a leaden
stone.
And when my turn comes, I firmly believe
The tyrant will deny me burial in vain –
In my funeral cortege will walk my young
visions,
My unwritten song will strike at heaven.
To repel the nightmare of bloody crimes,
I will be faithful to my dreams till the end.
None will restrain them, tear them away,
Not death the harlot, sadism the pimp, not
the pack of menials.
*Place of executions in Lwów
Resettlement
It was dark and cold; the pain froze to
icicles
When the train carried you into terror’s
storm.
Despair battered the walls. Large
wormwood drops,
Like hailstones, pounded hope laid to sleep.
Again and again thoughts poisoned
themselves
With memory of greening emotions, of
unplayed parts . . .
Venomous is the taste of such
remembrance.
Be calm, my love, I know it wounds.
You were lonely in that disheartened
crowd,
Though the same thoughts tormented all.
You were silent knowing that, fenced in a
circle
Of suffering, none would understand you.
So much defeat in each of these shadows,
So much crushing injury towering.
Bandaged by a burning tape of venom,
Blood flows, cries howl in helpless silence.
I don’t know where you are, but if you are –
You are still traveling on the same train,
As we all are; exhausted, sad,
Hopes shattered, heart sinking low.
Be calm, my love! Wipe your blue eyes.
Throw away despair, do not scold fate!
It’s so simple: we are all sacrificed
To mean times, the stupid avalanche.
Silence your aching heart; others are dying
with us,
Condemned to destruction in rigid rows . . .
. . . Morituri . . . as we know . . . must not lie.
Therefore I will not console you with easy
words.
Be calm, my love! What if in our cradles
Fate marked us for a particular destiny?
In our day, the grave and life are near
neighbors.
Stop frowning, stop worrying, my love.
Into the pyramid of such immense crimes
The future breaks: listen carefully!
Tears will shine in the eyes of those
Who come after us, think of us in silence.
The day of reckoning will come! Fire burns
the hand –
Not for us despair, not for us empty
weakness.
We will die, or survive, but without tears or
moans.
So, take heart, my love, be brave.
Four poems by M.J., a Warsaw ghetto poet.
Translated from the Polish by Yala Korwin.
A Funeral
The coffin – a crematorium furnace,
Lid – transparent, made of air,
Human body turned into smoke,
Blown through the smokestack of history.
How shall I honor your passing,
Walk in your funeral procession?
You, homeless handful of ashes
Between the earth and heaven.
How to cast a green garland
On the grave dug high in the air –
An ark of the world’s four corners
Under the invader’s fire.
Your coffin, which is not,
Will not slide from roaring cannons,
And only the column of air
Illumines your death with sunrays.
And here is such a great silence
On earth, like a trampled banner,
In the mourning smoke of corpses,
In the crucified outcry.
Remembrance
You saw blood of the homeless and
innocent.
You heard the voices mocking them.
You saw a beast jumping out of the crowd,
Heard the laugh, looked into living eyes
When smoke enveloped the silence
Of other voices.
You came back to your homeland,
As one comes back to life. You see a flower
Growing in the fertile, too-fertile earth.
Traces of smoke become sky-blue, like a
remorse,
The smell of burning disperses,
Even the shadows pale.
In the air – an aroma, like anticipation
Of new growth, of unknown words.
Chestnuts bloom, grasses are busy repairing
the web
In the earth’s red wound.
Buds are sticky, water sinks into the bushes
And roars again.
Like tokens of pleasure and strength,
The nightingale raves in thickets of young
trees.
Its song rises and bursts like fountains of
light
Beating the sky. The earth’s beauty is
unfriendly,
More indifferent, than inhuman massgraves.
And if you become lost in the beauty of
words,
As in an unseen face, their clean sound,
Too clean, will be outweighed by a mixture
Of earth and blood.
Burned Down
Beholding a burned down place,
I read in the black book of ashes
A law, subhuman, resurrected
From a mighty dusk of steppes.
What if today’s empires vanish,
Empty like gutted passageways?
Hachette will glisten many a time,
I’ll always die a stranger, alone.
What private shame will be revealed,
What music blackened with curses,
What words of insults invented,
Slanders from inflexible beast-like jaws?
What people will the future claim?
Whose homeless blood will flow again
In the gutters of streets repaved
With ancient cemetery stones?
To feed the hope with grandsons’ wisdom?
But generations are not like progressions
Of perfect numbers. History is bitter.
Anew they learn what’s a foot and hand.
Like children they acquire the words,
But in hate they are older than rocks.
In their frail hands a gravestone weighs
No more than their shadows.
Here Also, as in Jerusalem
Here also, as in Jerusalem,
Is a gloomy wailing wall.
Those who stood against it,
Will not see it again.
Empty night, empty home, deaf edifice.
From there they dragged them out,
Left darkness, fright,
And dwellings – wombs of death.
Buildings in a procession of stones
Under inexorable sky,
Seemed to be following a funeral
Of families, thousands.
Christians thrown to lions
Knew for what cause they were dying.
But you? – Behold your empty home
Taken over by that blind tenant, the fire.
No one cast a handful of dirt
On your mass grave.
Greeted by a silence,
Delivered from words of treason.
When thirsty, you implored,
Called out with wound-like lips,
No one brought water
To the wire-sealed wagons.
The earth was fleeing from under the
damned,
Warsaw was sinking in the smoke of trains
When in the upper-floor window-panes
The sun announced it was dawning.
"Imprisoned behind ghetto walls and barbed wire fences, these poets continued writing till their
hands, pens and breath were stopped forever, but never their words! In their verses we can read
extreme bitterness, a feeling of abandonment, loneliness, and emptiness. Yet, also hope and
presentiment of a new dawn." -- Yala Korwin
THE KAPOS
OR, ARNOLDT AND LILI MORGENSTERN
[Nazi Germany, 1938]
Kapo: A Jewish prisoner in one of the many infamous Nazi
concentration camps who was, for one reason or another,
given "special privileges"--including at first (before the
nature of those camps became clear to outsiders), the
recruiting of new prisoners (or "guests" as they were called),
on a temporary, so-called "trial basis."
--Dictionary of World War II
And so the Kapos came to our little town, let out around dinnertime
With some soldiers, from that crazy Nazi camp; & they rounded us up,
promising that we two could be Kapos, too,
In those first "Gray Announcements" which they'd printed to hand out
--If we rendered ourselves up to join them, for even just a
"trial visit," & "At Once, Early, and Without a Fight"
--For otherwise, just as sure as we were born, they said,
late some night, maybe even close to midnight,
The muffled roar of convoy trucks would come
When we weren't dressed, & it was inconvenient
--& My husband, Arnoldt, then took me aside, & told me in a whisper,
that yes, surrendering for a "trial visit" was a damn sight
Better, than being awoken late one night, looking into a muzzle
or a gunsight; or worse yet, maybe being hunted down
when we had both just bedded down
--Hiding terrified, in our basement behind the wine-rack, in that old broken bathtub
Which for so many months now I'd thanked Jahweh yes Jahweh Himself,
that no one else had yet found!
No, not even our next-door neighbor's children who--when we two
weren't around; & they came back from their monastery school,
or their butterfly hunt that fled through the fields,
so close to that camp, every afternoon, every single afternoon-Used to make a "game" of opening our cellar-door, & then searching
thereabouts with their flashlights, at twilights
With their puppy dog, "Fritze"; & sometimes, too, with our other
dear neighbors' dogs & children...
******
...And so, suddenly, there was a commotion of motorcycles stopping,
& Arnoldt & I laughing, with that poor old broken bathtub
far, ever so far, far behind us
& We two (in two Kapo sidecars) carrying two light packages
Containing two toothbrushes, two combs, & two brand new sets of pajamas,
one hairbrush & also one fine nightgown
Plus one bottle of good Moselle we'd gaily taken, all for our overnight stay
"Experimentally," as we planned it (for truly it just had to be experimentally),
For just as Arnoldt said, to get us to come to Camp that way, & to
give up & go there so easily
Had been given to us so generously...
It was clear that they just had to agree!
--And besides that, there were two gift packets of cigarettes which,
as those two Kapo drivers themselves pointed out,
--& Yet it's also true that just as soon as Arnoldt had marched upstairs
to get that me that very first night, with that very first copy
He said they'd said, of the "Gray Announcements" to be given out
(With Arnoldt holding it in his teeth, & with Arnoldt also holding up
both arms as if in surrender before me, as if for a joke & with
a loud laugh
Then pointing with one hand through a window downstairs to two
other figures crouching beside two racing bicycles-Two more Nazi solders who had suddenly appeared & who were taking a newspaper
"Propaganda Photograph")
--Oh yes it's also true that even that very first bright sudden
flashbulb hurt my eyes
Like a burning gas explosion; why oh yes why for the sake of Jahweh,
why did those Kapos have to do all that then, for it wasn't yet quite midnight
--Yes it was just after dinnertime I remember & yet our light
was already out.