Robbed of my childhood,
Bundled in smelly rags, Humiliated to the lowest ebbs of Hell, Stiffened with fright Cannot distinguish day from night. Swollen stomach, gnawing sickness, Sunken, hollow eyes. The heart beats, Little hope. Why survive? Why stay alive? Like a beaten, degraded animal That has felt man's inhumanity To man, Loved ones torn apart, Castration, damnation. How can other creatures Partake in such ghastly features? Maimed, demonstrably scarred for life I must survive! I must survive! The heart beats. There is little hope. -by Arthur Weil I CRY FOR THEM
During the holocaust So many jews Lost their lives And I cry for them Still today by: Aldo Kraas |
Tale of a Sprinter THE PAST - I am an athlete from Berlin, my feet are fast and swift. I can run faster than anyone! Truly, this is the Lord's gift! Any race I participate in, I always come in first, for I tell myself, "I HAVE to win"; it is like a great thirst. Even if someone, somehow passes me, I put on an extra burst of speed and run past him, leaving him behind; thus, I take the lead. I once thought, "If I keep running this way, I might be in the Olympics, some day..." THE PRESENT - But now the year is nineteen-thirty-eight And for my dreams, it's just too late. My running days are all gone, I'm not going to see tomorrow's dawn. Yes, it is true that I can run very fast; But it is also true that I am a Jew... There's no running, from the Holocaust. by Sudeep Pagedar |
The Butterfly
The last, the very last, So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow. Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing against a white stone… Such, such a yellow Is carried lightly ‘way up high. It went away I'm sure because it wished to kiss the world goodbye. For seven weeks I've lived in here, Penned up inside this ghetto But I have found my people here. The dandelions call to me And the white chestnut candles in the court. Only I never saw another butterfly. That butterfly was the last one. Butterflies don't live in here, In the ghetto. -Pavel Friedmann Frozen Jews
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. -Avrom Sutzkever |
Fear
Today the ghetto knows a different fear, Close in its grip, Death wields an icy scythe. An evil sickness spreads a terror in its wake, The victims of its shadow weep and writhe. Today a father's heartbeat tells his fright And mothers bend their heads into their hands. Now children choke and die with typhus here, A bitter tax is taken from their bands. My heart still beats inside my breast While friends depart for other worlds. Perhaps it's better – who can say? – Than watching this, to die today? No, no, my God, we want to live! Not watch our numbers melt away. We want to have a better world, We want to work – we must not die! -Eva Picková Holocaust
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. -Barbara Sonek |
Lost
Night, this empty pit less dark, Alone known not by name, only by a number, a mark, Held up in these enclosed walls, constructed to mortify to contain you from the outside halls, to the corpselike cries you become immune, the fire that consumes life even cannot consume the night, with death billowing upon the fire you will be gone soon, At each dusk the isolated lack of light, again takes away hope and leaves no rebellion no fight, At each dusk all is lost into the night. -by [email protected] What I Don't Know
What you don't know can't hurt, they say. I disagree. Did they know? How awful, how hateful? The ghettos, the camps, the chamber, the stars? That made you feel, so different, so sad. As if, you weren't human, anymore. The lives taken, those spared, Will be changed forever. Those that saw and then, saw no more, Those that saw again and again. Those forced to leave, Those forced to stay, Those forced to be somewhere in the middle. There was no way out, no escape. Only to live, Only to die. -by Ruth Dykstra |
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me. -by Martin Niemöller |