19th Annual Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Poetry Issue

Sanctity

It’s something we need
To talk about
The ugly side of conflict
The cultural genocide of the Holocaust.
During the second world war
Most did not live to tell
But those who did
Speak of unspeakable acts.
As those of Jewish faith
Faced a persecution
Families were torn apart
Incinerators filled the air,
With an acrid odour
From the burning flesh
Of the innocent
Whose screams and cries,
Prevail to this day
As Hitler has many names
One face replaces the other
The suffering across lines,
Is non-discriminatory
It is as pervasive today
As for those who stood in line
Waiting for their execution.
Whose only guilt
Was being who they were
Not from anything
That they’d ever done.
But the race they were born into
To be chastised
By an ethnocentric doctrine
That lacks any legitimacy,
Or jurisdiction
We need to acknowledge this loss
As a black eye in our history
Not to forget,
But to solemnly remember
Not to relive the moment
But to teach us how not to be
To defend the dignity and sanctity of life.

Untitled

The bombs left many
gasping
many splintered
before seeing
a holocaust

He watched

black smoke curling from the crematorium
where his mother and sister were being consumed;

next he watched (they made him watch)
while they hung a child who took an hour to die.

‘Where is God?’ a prisoner asked, ‘where is He?’ 

– and a clear voice answered, ‘He is here,
hanging on the gallows.’

(Based on the memories of the Holocaust survivor
and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel.)

Remember

Remember the sore-ridden boy with the severed
leg, Gottschalk, who coughed himself to sleep
on a floor of dirt. Remember the half-blinded
girl, Jesenska, who collapsed by the assembly line,
her box full of machine parts scattering
as she fell. Remember the women–Desnos,
Nussbaum, Rubczak–who, after having
their children ripped from their slender arms,
forsook all pride and hope. Remember how
they became as statues, starring with dulled eyes,
into the infinite gloom of fresh-wound memories.
Remember the heavy rains, the muddy puddles,
the bodies of broken men–Feldman, Cohen, Shkop,
Ullman, Pirjevec, Kolbe–in muddy puddles.
Remember the compound where dozens
were held, finding room for themselves only
like folded sheets stuffed into a closet.
Remember that so many drained the cup
of that specious phrase spiked with insidious intent:
Arbeit Macht Frei.

But remember that these many millions–male
and female–young and old–all and singular–
remain woven into the blood and sinew
of our hearts as a testament to the simple truth
that the Oppressed–in spite of fear, savagery,
and hate–can survive.

Animadversion

Across social media, the animadversion of “Jews,” “Hebrews,” “Israelis,”-
You know the kind, remains popular fodder for denizens more intrigued
With Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram’s bright lights than actual collective
Justice, human decency, or the sorts of goings on that honor life’s worth.

Irresponsible censors claim prejudice is fake news, hatred died last century,
BDS makes better citizens, also that no one really wants to throw the Holy
Land’s people into the sea. After all, liberal attitudes are necessarily good,
Plus “equality” means treating terrorists the same as victims, worldwide.

Funny, though, the genocide that was the Shoah, our near destruction
In Esther’s Persia, plus countless other faces/places of enemies argued
Otherwise. In every generation, some villain seeks die Endlösung der
Judenfrage, the removal from humanity, of us, G-d’s precious children.

Remembering Again

Numbers grow faint
on withering arms.
Old railroad tracks
dissolve in rust.
Flowers bloom where
only shadows grew.
Blue sky and wind
drive away the smoke
from long ago burnings..
Pictures fade.
Blacken bricks crumble
with the rain.
Words become just slogans
written on abandoned alley walls.

Then again, faces disappear, nameless,
into dark deep basements.
Tombstones are broken and scattered
on sacred ground.
The whiffs of gas and smoke
drift on the passing wind,
stirring memories
that should never have been forgotten.
Old voices begin to speak.
Oh yes, remember us again.

A Shame

A shame that it would happen
A shame what people could do
A shame so many took part
A shame innocents suffered
A shame the world did little
A shame to deny it happened
A shame if we ever forget.

My Mother, My Daughter and Anne Frank

1.

My mother, born in the same year as Anne Frank,
was woken night after night in July 1942 by sirens,

ran with her brothers and sisters, gas masks in hands,

to a basement for shelter, to hide from the bombs
raining on Alexandria, while Rommel stalked Egypt,

inching closer, fighting the battles of El Alamein

in the near distance, while Anne Frank moved into
her Secret Annex, began her diary probing a world gone mad

with curiosity, intelligence and burning questions.

My mother still remembers her father’s fear, his quaking
and stomach cramps at the sound of the sirens,

the first bomb that fell on an apartment block where friends lived,

the threat in Rommel’s approach, poised to push the British
from Egypt, to bring mass murder to the Jews of Alexandria.

One of six children, my mother witnessed

her family’s dispersal across the globe,
saw generation follow generation, a beautiful flowering

gifted only to those who did not perish.

2.

My mother’s six-year-old granddaughter knows about
Malala Yousefzai, burns with questions,

tries and fails to understand why so many girls

around the world are denied education.
My six-year-old daughter knows about Anne Frank,

burns with questions, tries and fails to understand

why Anne Frank had to live in hiding in an attic,
why the Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews.

I cannot answer her questions, cannot explain

what I also do not understand. My mother’s
six-year-old granddaughter is a whole world unto herself,

the flowering of another generation that holds

a realm of possibilities, a realm of futures in its eager hands.
Had she been born in a different place in a different time

she may have been one of the millions of worlds

extinguished to fulfil one man’s demonic vision.
We live, we die, but what passes in between

is so senseless, so brutal, so full of carnage

and questions asked that cannot be answered
that we flounder in our sacred mission to try and try.

At Sobibór, Prisoners Fought Back

The Rottweiler next door killed my wife’s pink
…………Chihuahua, but spat out one ear.
We planted its ear in our flower bed next to
…………the foxgloves under 3 inches of mulch.
It germinated, sending up coiled fronds 14” high.
…………At the first rain, it died, the entire spectacle.

It barks at night, or so my wife says. She hears it.
…………Lorraine, our Mexican maid from Oaxaca,
hears it, too. Her mole won first prize at the Pomona Fair,
…………taking 1st place for color but 3rd for taste. It was the color
of blood that’s been left out in the sun.

Lorraine calls everyone amigo except me. It’s clear we are
…………not friends, so she calls me mister or maestro.
She asks me every morning if I’d like some mud. Her ass
…………is wider than our Maytag. She doesn’t use pot holders
when she removes hot skillets from the stove.

The Rottweiler next door killed my appetite for life. It’s a special
…………breed bred for violence. He ate our pooch whole, clamping
down on its head and swallowing, as a snake devours a mouse.
…………Only Judy Collins can mend my heart. Only the past offers
escape. From here on out all our neighbors are Rottweilers.

Yom Means Day

Yom means day
Hashoah means remembrance
Holocaust means disambiguation or burnt
We remember the burning
We recall not singing
For our voices were
Pecked out my a metaphorical raven
Metaphorically sitting here wishing there was saving
We hope the terror is gone
we pray we will see the sun
but a part of the sin
Is there is no grave yard to put bodies in.
So let us look to the sky
Not for a silent deity
But for any images we may see.
So we may say sorry
Sorry it happened, sorry we didn’t do enough
Sorry sorry sorry you are gone.

All the Children

Sealed tight on iron wheels
clanging, clashing, grinding
metal on metal, burning coal,
choking, cold, flesh sticks and tears,
the smell of urine.

Small bundles of rags
are passed through air vents
as the train slows,
accompanied by desperate wails,
‘look after my baby, my little one’.

The cries fade as the grim freight
moves on, inexorably, heading east.
In monochrome queues of people
shuffle forward, left, right, left…
children cling to their mothers, whimpering.

Numb with fear, wide-eyed, dogs barking
they edged into the showers.
‘Leave your clothes here,’
were the orders,
‘fresh ones will be provided,’ they lied.

The iron doors clang shut,
and in the half grey light
there was a moment’s silence…
…until the gas came.

They Were Refugees, Too

They were refugees, too,
back in the Forties,
settled in Chicago,
learned English,
some a lot, some a little,
found jobs of some kind,
made do like their neighbors
until things got better.

And by the Seventies,
on hot summer nights
they were loud and happy
gathering on Morse Avenue
around parking meters
in the dying sunlight
outside one of the delis
lining the street
to argue about the Cubs
or politics or anything
they could disagree upon.
If someone made a point
someone else made
a counterpoint.

Arguments squared off
with cab driver against lawyer,
handyman against accountant,
all of them equal as a people.
They were survivors of the holocaust,
some with forearm tattoos
shouting under short sleeve shirts,
others with tattoos silent under
long sleeves worn to the office
that day with a tie.

Chicago had welcomed them
thirty years earlier and now
they were giving back, working
and sending their children
to college after making a life
and a neighborhood their own.

Holocaust Remembered

In the museum everyone quietly, slowly passes through
Each photograph, each artifact, each memory
I walk through quickly, my time is limited
Time stands still
A photograph of a beautiful woman
Full lips, wide smile, hopeful eyes
Perished
One of six million Jews
Gypsies
Homosexuals
Handicapped
Poles
And many, many other nationalities
Perished
Gassed, shot, starved to death,
Worked to death
And remembered here in the museum
In our nation’s capital
In Washington, DC
In the United States of America
Images, films, photographs of
Children, men, women
Young, old, reduced to bones
Spirits crushed
Reduced to ashes
Laughs gone forever
Hopes, dreams, talents
Silenced
In the cold ground below
Generations lost;
Disappeared in the purple cloud above
I walk out slowly
I retrospect
I pray…
I light a candle
I cry

1942

Spirit babies
flowing down to earth
warm from oven wombs
descended through
millions of spirits
young, in-between, old,
unborn flowing upwards
into eternity

Those new babies swam
down into the world
through a river of horror
through grieving spirits
trailing fierce sparks
of remembrance
as they ascended still warm
still smoldering from the fire
of extermination ovens

These being born,
were they marked?
These being born,
were they singed?

Did the tears
that flowed from
the murdered ones
wet the birthing babies
and cover them like cauls?

Watching Martin Heidegger on You-Tube

Here he wielded an axe without thinking of it as an axe.
“He fitted in with the farmers and foresters so well.
I can see his face over there:
he’s still alive as far as I’m concerned.”
A smiling son ushers us deeper into the Black Forest hut.
Who would have thought we can see him today
thinking the unthinkable and doing that which a small part
of him knew not to do. A cousin speaks next:
“As a child he was the weakest and smallest but commanded
all of us with his piercing blue eyes.” Cut to a dog-eared still.
The camera pans slowly across a desk, switching directions
so as to avoid a dark swastika; an abrupt cut shows
a grainy footage of a rustic figure splitting logs;
the Hitlerian moustache a mere shadow among deeper shadows;
light splintering each black and white frame until the end.
A fly crawls over my laptop screen briefly covering 1942
then takes wing as Heidegger becomes a talking head,
full frame. As I watch it’s difficult to grasp, as he talks,
his comrades are inscribing philosophy on human flesh.

Hitler Burns

Hitler is burning
He burned yesterday
He will be burning tomorrow
He began to burn immediately
after his last breath.
Hitler will burn forever.
He would gladly accept a drop
of cool water on his tongue
from the least of those at Auschwitz,
at Dachau, at Warsaw, at Flossenburg.

Now, he knows.

He needs no convincing;
how cruel
how wrong
how doomed
from the moment he began
to devalue those he termed
“useless humanity.”
Now, he understands
that each one
was more acceptable than he.

He has total recall of each
prideful thought, callous decision,
every brutal act,
Now, he sees their faces
perpetually before him.

Hitler cannot escape the flames,
his torment will never end.
Yet he is not consumed.

Hitler burns.

Chamber Music

Where once was Jericho falling
to the music of one mind
the stones have risen unseen.
There is no way of finding a way
of words that never fade
when written in the air.
 
Every thought an echo
of a voice once heard.
The speaker is unknown.
None dare ask of anyone
the answer to the question
‘Who walks into this world?’
 
How the mind may leap
higher than a hand can reach
There is no way of knowing
all that is passing unware.
and how it may appear to be
the sound heard only in silence
from the far side of the universe
where the walls have an ending.

Limits
Warsaw, Poland

not much left
of the ghetto

a small
shadowed-away trace
of wall

a relic of dead-ends

high and dark
skins of brick

guided here
by our local guide

as we walk behind
normal homes

with
functional courtyards

bare trees

a reluctant sky
invisible grey

lines on the ground
to show
where things
were

how to remember

maps of
dead people
dead stories

parked cars
window boxes

limits of hope

human limits
stones in holes

candles in holes
burning people

Freedom Feast

My grandfather’s house
In Beltzi Romania
Whitewashed walls ready
for Passover.
Crushed matzos and special Carmel
wine from the holy land spills.
Bard’s hair caught
in the broken glass
Grandma Sura holiday’s
Kerchief torn
Baby’s doll ripped.

Attic pours bibles and
talmuds to the creek.

A mournful hay roof touches snow

Her War Ghosts

The ghosts she did not know
 Tinged her days, sepia shaded longing
 Sadness touching upon celebrations
 Cooling the edges, chilling
 her laughter
 
The ghosts she did not know
 Painted her moments, washing her walls
 Their shadowy silhouettes hanging
 Among family portraits
 Photos of before or now lined the walls, never then
 
She looked into the eyes of her grandmother
 Grandfather, uncle, aunts
 Days, years, months before, lightness, light
 Family she’d never meet
 Or know
 She looked at their mouths, soft
 Their hands, open
 Their bellies, full
 Her parents never spoke of what happened
 Only these three photos remained, hung
 Silent
 
Walking the hall she struggled to capture their voices
 Their words, alert to prick their whisperings
 She could sense their muffled background rumblings
 
Standing before their faces she could feel the rise
 Their anger stirring, her hatred mounting, stomach rolling
 Her family had been taken
 Ripped from all they’d known, stripped
 Down to nothing, nothing but flesh and bones
 Their bodies burned
 The dust of their debris covering everything, falling
 Still
 
She moved to Papa and Mama’s portrait, young then, before
 A spring dance, lace, chiffon
 Laughter filling their faces, spilling easily into gentle bodies
 Ghosts she did not know
 She smiled, a bit
 Mama’s hand gently touched Papa’s clean-shaven cheek
 Her wrist soft, clean
 Their numbers inked
 Embedded into flesh
 Stained
 Always covered now, her body shook, on guard with prickling
 Her covering would slip in moments, exposed
 Fear and shame contorting Mama’s face, always fear now
 She longed to touch their mark
 
She turned to Grandmother’s portrait
 She had her Grandmother’s eyes
 Spoken, this brought stinging to Mama
 She looked deeply, her eyes
 She pressed her nose upon the glass, cold
 Dust stirred
 The barrier between then and now
 How could they share eyes
 When she’d never seen the horrors?
 Her reflection mirrored back in the aged glass
 Her eyes overlapping Grandmother’s
 Blending and reflecting
 Revealing
 Her ghost

The Terrorist

Such a pleasant face,
so benign
as in ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly,’
who would have thought
he’d die a terrorist?
Did his selfie lie?
Could he have started out
some mommy’s precious child
laughing at a puppy’s antics,
liking pizza,
rooting for a football team
with boyhood pals?
So why then
did he grow so inured
to inflicting pain
or even death?
Did he succumb to a brain dysfunction,
a mental abnormality?
Was he taught a foreign ideology,
some sacrosanct creed
of his favored group
that transcended suffering of ‘others?’
Were family or friends
disfranchised by an ‘enemy’
or did some other kind of tribulation
or extreme disappointment
test his humanity?
Was a key ingredient
a life so vacuous,
a cultural alienation so profound,
he craved a terrorist’s clarity and belonging,
a moth to the flame?
Unfortunately, we’ll never know,
for as he was fatally shot
authorities can only analyze his history,
investigate his internet activity,
interview those who knew him,
and speculate on an answer.
Still, in the end,
varied pundits will mouth
the received wisdom
that he was nothing
but a demented savage.
But then, had I or mine been harmed
by a terrorist’s act,
what would my reaction be?

Nowadays the Blue Is Hidden

The blue was taken from a snail found in the Sea. The snail comes up once every 70 years.
– Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 26a, Menachot 44a

1. There is a street in Paris (11th arrondissement) called
The Street of Tailors. I visited my friend who
lives near the street of tailors. We went to eat at a café
around the corner. The first day we passed the street of tailors,
I asked him, What is this street?

Don’t know, he said.
The next time we passed it, I asked again,
Where does the name – street of tailors – come from?
It once was a street of tailors, he said.

We passed it again the next day,
What is the street of tailors? I asked.

He said this: I heard that there was a street of tailors working there,
then the Germans took Paris, June 14, 1940,
and they all disappeared.

2. A street of tailor artists, seventy years of ghosts, they have not changed
the name of the street. A chasid on the sixth floor
ascends and descends silently
to make the evening prayers.
The street of tailors.

He knows fabrics but is a failure at freedom. Fingering the coat
he peers over his glasses. Nice merchandise, he says.
Expert in drapes and Torah, hands stained
with experimental dyes, he mixes a perfect blend
for a priestly tunic.

Expatriates tell jokes in a café, they order intestines all around.
It smells like an insult. Later they fuss
and pass the street of tailors.

3. The tailors sewed in secrecy, to recover the lost blue thread,
mystery blue, a deceased mollusk carried it
into the deep where it gave birth,
in salt, to the sea.

Hiding from Punch Cards

A net is dragged through Berlin,
Captures data from doctors,
schools, churches, post office.

The family changed their name
back in ’30, so that shouldn’t be
a problem. They converted to
Catholicism about the same time,
removed menorahs, took down
the mezuzah. David and Rebekah wear
crosses to school, a picture of Christ
hangs in the hall. Nazi thugs

break windows, paint graffiti on
Uncle’s store downstairs. They move
five blocks away. Three knocks

on the door
middle of the night
Father dragged away
family left to worry
what the machines
will do to them next.

(written while reading an account of IBM’s involvement
in the collection and processing of data used by the Nazis
to identify Jews during the Holocaust)

written in a notebook on a visit to Auschwitz

I never thought it would make me feel this way
perhaps I should have listened read more about it
but I thought I knew it all I did know it all
but I had never seen it for myself
now i feel both guilty and a victim
and there is a smell in here

and the echo of the camp orchestra
lines of people waiting to come in to see
the ovens the showers the relics
outside noise from the school children
as they wait to be led inside and taught a lesson
this is an awful place and there is a smell here

a stench that clings to the air like honey
from the rosebushes flowering red roses
drop their petals on the path like spots of paint
while visitors in lines try to look respectful
as thorns covered by foliage
are ready to prick any hand that explores them

Yahrzeit

There are those on whom grief lies
like cold stones on a winter night
women and men in streets, on buses
gray, drab, holding their burdens close,
year after year,
worn before their time
Who will never love again
or grieve another time
telling themselves; this stone is mine
let no other disturb it
Tradition has us unveil stones
after a month and revisit them
once a year – on Yahrzeit
we stand beside
the stones and remember.
On this day each
may place his flower
his own small stone
on the grave
and move on
There are some
who dare to reach out
to touch another thinking
my hand is a flower
from under earth’s blanket
that can brighten drab stone
when spring comes
The flowers know that
only those who have
suffered winter’s cold are granted
to grow between the stones

untitled

Large eyes, wasted frames
Haunted looks, dead men walking
No end in sight, none.

Dear Elie Wiesel

I cannot forget the sickness in my throat,
the heaviness in my core when I learned
that in 1939 900 Jewish refugees 
on the MS St. Louis—a ship named
for the patron saint against the death
of children—cabled ahead, but the president
did not respond because he feared
they would take jobs from his own
and so the ship was turned away.
 
But I am sorry
others have forgotten.

Watchers

They were witnesses as Jews
were dispersed from
the land of Bach and Beethoven
to the far corners of that
ancient continent.

They saw evil wave his baton
to the left….to the right
when names became numbers
labor was forced
ghettos dotted theland
ovens spewed the noxious remains
of innocents.

They watched as six million Jews
were robbed of
their properties
as family and friends
were eliminated
another five million deemed
unworthy
unfit for life
for Nationhood.

…... . . . .
Watching came to our shores
when the first Americans
were driven from their homes
to arid deserts
lands stolen
treaties broken
lives shattered.

They witnessed
the institution of slavery
and Jim Crow in
"the land of the free."

And in the past century
gathered again on the walkways
if towns and cities across Europe
to witness forced marches
to see cattle cars filled with
human refuse
to hear the clanging of their
death toll.

Shameful accomplices
are these bystanders*
witnesses to misery and death
as they watch
…..and watch

Impossible to Forget

Some claim the Holocaust didn’t happen
that there was no use of chemical weapons
that decimated innocent people,
but present events remind us
that the Holocaust was real
and shouldn’t be repeated.
Who listens to departed souls
who couldn’t escape the gas chambers?
Who listened to emaciated bodies
who died waiting to be fed?
Who listened to orphaned
children whose parents
couldn’t escaped the horrors
of the Holocaust? All those souls,
bodies, and orphaned children
are screaming from far-away worlds
and beg us to remember
a dark, criminal, and deadly
past which seems likely to repeat.
Voices from the graves never forget the past
and call out to humanity to halt the hateful
rhetoric if our planet is to survive.

Yom Hashoah
(Holocaust Remembrance Day April 24th 2017)

Haunting apparitions resurface upon a tabula rasa
whereat soundless ancestors beckon, clamor, and despair
excruciatingly fateful gasification heinous hour
incinerating, numbing and soiling Yahweh
genealogical holy illustrious Jewish kinsfolk lost
mine name obsolete per quotidian rapacious suffering testament
unbeknownst victims wickedly yanked
absolute blistering, charring, and desecrating every family
grotesque hallucinations intimating jarring killing machine
inducing jagged, mangled and pronounced sorrow
tears unequivocally viciously and wretchedly annul bereavement
crematoriums devour glorious Hassidic kind loving
outlook painfully riddles
Sephardic too vanished wraithlike yield zero;
culture fractured interrupted links
odiously rendered ultimate x’d ancestors
blackened crisps descendents emptying fracking,
genocide heaps irrecoverably jumbled
key learned men noticeably obliterated
plenti quality resplendent sons tormented,
ultimately value wrenched
ache benumbs captured, deported, exterminated
flourishing glorious Hebrew individuals
jammed, kicked, liquidated mercilessly never offending population
overtly pilloried, quintessentially ridiculed,
Semitic tribes underwent venal wretched x yoked
ancestry begone; cremated, decimated, egregiously fated grim hell
insidiously jerked, killed odiously
perdition reigned suffering
toll untold vacant withered x’d y Zed
thy genealogical family tree severely truncated
great many generations of mine genealogical tree
paternal and maternal grand descendants met their doom
thy family devoid of many branches
limbs lopped and fed fiery ovens
forever missing links constitute gaps sans broken chain.

A Genre

I went to the horror film
with a victim of its horror,
and though he was not my relative
I kissed his cheek,
blue track veins
under skin of winter paper white.

Various “miracles” had brought him
to this not very clean theater;
silent on that subject,
he took his seat among those with no idea
this was his life.

And when they loaded the trains, he was the cargo.
And when they dumped the ashes, his were absent.
The projector has no conscience,
in dark we sit
as events unfold, before one who folds his eyes.

The Sun Never Rose Over the Belzec Death Camp

The shape of the sun did not enter our minds,
Spring days and summer, a sameness.
Yet we gathered our strength and helped
Each other to our feet, hid the sick and injured,
Made excuses for those not strong enough to rise.

The fields gray and mud, our skin darkened
with labor and sweat. We ate because we had to,
We shared what we had because that is our way.
We dealt with the sameness with prayer and Kaddish,
A jubilance for life even as they tried to murder us.

We must have been frightening to the men with rifles
Holding the leaches of violent dogs. We scarred them
Into horror and night sweats. Still we worked,
Sharing the little we had growing stronger inside.
Everyday the same. They knew we were better than them.

Something

for the children of the Holocaust

Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.

Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.

Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
which finality has swept into a corner, where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.

untitled

"Though I walk through the valley of darkness" Psalm 23:4

the wandering
Jew walked
and wondered beyond death

"Not all those who wander are lost." — J. R. R. Tolkein

Victor and Victim

Time crawls on bloodied knees
and I am mired in the earth
where millions died
both it and I doing what we must    
without a choice
to keep alive the memory
of so many souls
tossed in shallow graves
and to keep ourselves alive.
Time, perhaps, is the victor
wounded but struggling on
while I, the vanquished,
became a victim
of everything I have seen—
time and I without a chance
to stay our destinies
unscathed.

Mass

When you think of ‘mass’ what do you think?
Church mass
Mass graves
the human mass
the dark mass within the universe or of the dark mass in our minds
or
perhaps there’s
the masses of particles
of physical existence
which makes our huge populations able to wonder about God while looking at
the stars and also wonder about God after looking
at
a
massacre
consider the
increase
in
mass
of
a
falling
object
when
that
falling object
is
a
human
being
who
has
become
a
victim
of
a
falling morality

Majdanek 1995

We are here because our ancestors told us to come
go
in the winter they said
go
feel the chill in your
bones
some of us walk on the ground
in the snow we leave
tracks
some of us perch on the
fences
from here we see Lublin
the chimneys of Lublin
the chimneys of houses in Lublin where
mothers
cook pierogi for their
families
sweet pączki for their
children
fathers
smoke cigarettes
smoke
rises from chimneys of warm houses in Lublin where
blind people
eat dinner
remember
we are here because we were lucky
because our ancestors told us to
go
here even the summer wind blows cold

Pivotal Moment

for Peter M. Blau

The summer of 1941 a young man with a thick accent came to our door and asked to speak to my father. Whether my father had heard about him, I can’t say. I was two. And so my father signed for his fiancée desperate to escape from the Nazis, while this twenty-something Jewish student attended the local seminary at a time when safety was his only other concern after making his way across Europe with no thought except to board a ship which was delayed in port. While waiting, he met an American, who knew about a seminary that had raised funds for a scholarship, but couldn’t find an eligible refugee, and it turned out the seminary was in our hometown.

After he graduated, the young man left to pursue his education elsewhere. I learned some, but not all, of this years later when I was a student at the University of Chicago in need of a part-time job and he was already a distinguished professor seeking someone to transcribe dictation tapes for his new book, difficult because he had such a thick accent and I was unfamiliar with the subject—just this between us until the day I stood in the doorway to his office and explained that I couldn’t come in for a few days because I had to go home. He asked where I lived and was moved to find out

who I was and told me how grateful he’d been for my father’s help, but was dismayed to hear that my father had recently died so he thanked my mother instead. She recounted to me how my father arranged for another family to hire the fiancée, a lovely blonde and fine seamstress, but she married a different man and moved away and nobody could remember what happened to the man who asked for help to bring her to America.

The professor took a personal interest in me because it was clear I was still grieving my father’s untimely death. I had no plans for my future though graduation was just a few months off, so it happened over lo mein in a Chinese restaurant that the professor asked if I wanted to go to Stanford with him for the summer; he’d arrange for the University to hire me as his assistant—exactly what happened and then one evening he invited me for dinner where I met a young man with a post doc fellowship. Within weeks, I moved in with him and the marriage lasted for twenty-three years.

Now fifty years later, I decided to surf the Internet for news of the professor who had died in 2002; impressive list of accomplishments, books, papers, and awards, two marriages. This part of his story I never heard before—his capture and torture by the Nazis, details of his daring escape across Europe, his sister saved on a Kindertransport, his parents dying in Auschwitz, his enlistment in the Army and return to Europe where he served as an interpreter, but what I do know first-hand is the dinner and conversation we shared one spring evening on Chicago’s South Side and the offer that propelled me on a trajectory setting the course for the rest of my life.

senryu

synagogues on fire
Jews crowded into boxcars
arms numbered for tears

Kristallnacht in Esslingen

“The Propaganda Ministry instructed the papers on 10 November:
“here and and there window-panes had been smashed; ‘synagogues
had set themselves alight or burst into flames in some other way”
from The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939, by Richard. J. Evans.

At daybreak, in a Jewish orphanage,
sledgehammers broke down doors, and stones
broke glass. The cupboards and the tables all
gave away, and sinks exploded inwards, paper worked
itself into a storm that covered floors.

The orphans watched a bonfire in the yard
mount up with prayer books, shawls, their toys,
in silence. There were no beds to go back to.
The angry air bruised, pulled at hair, and spat:
“Get out or you’ll be next into the flames!”

The children in pyjamas ran through streets
where Jewish shops and houses blew out smoke.
Prone men and women bled and were detained.
Unwritten orders carried out themselves,
and shunted people off to unknown fates.

An American Son

“Dad, you gobble up your food
Like a vulture eating his prey.”
“How can I invite Tommy for diner
when you eat like this?”

I was 13 at the time—a sensitive boy
who nothing of what my father
suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

Why was I kept in the dark
about the darkest chapter
In the life of a father I loved?

It was my American mother
who understood him so well.
She knew his fear
in giving voice to the past
and burdening his American son.

So he kept the years of an entire family
lost to himself.

It was years later when I learned
that by protecting me
he was protecting himself
in order to live in the present
and not in the past.

Cracow

For years I didn’t say much
about being Jewish. My surname’s
pronounced Whittaker. My father
changed his name from Abraham
to Andy, didn’t have children
till Hitler was dead. When I sing
a few Hebrew songs at my music camp,
the other Jew in the room says almost
tenderly, No one does this. It’s been
hidden. Yes, misspelled
like smoke from certain kilns,
mass graves near Vilnius.
If I tell someone and they say,
Oh, you don’t look Jewish….
Or half-jokingly: I didn’t know
they let any Jews into Bellingham….
Or: You know, I’m tired of hearing
about the Holocaust…. I can’t
misspell our streets like damp cigars
in someone else’s teeth, can’t hold
my poems as if they weren’t
these porous shields. Yes,
dear reader, let’s discuss
a certain vacant lot
near Austen Street, where a gang
of four strips a boy, sits him
down in an armchair, burrs
sticking to the boy’s wrists,
so their sickle eyes get to revise
the kid a little, see if he’s
American or if he’s been
circumcised. In Cracow,
once, there were wells
with no eyelids, lakes like Gretel’s
oven, where almost no one
muttered, My error will abide
with me and spend the night.

We Must Be Remembered

We came in cattle cars
to the camps,
Huddling together in hope.
At least we had each other…

Until they sent off the sick
and separated us,
men from women
mothers from sons
fathers from daughters
wives from husbands….

The showers took the weak
sickness took others
work details wore down the strong.

Flesh melted away,
leaving hard bone
under ropy skin…

Liberation came far too late
for far too many.

We must be remembered–
lest the world forget our names.

Coming Back Shortly

(In memory of Ivan Schwebel (1932-2011))

Half-drunk cup of coffee
Half-read newspaper
Half-used paints

Went out along
Well-trodden leafy path
You knew so well

After your turmoil
Bringing Jewish history
Into modern Israeli cities

King David arising
Lone Warsaw Ghetto trolley
Together in Zion Square

These walks in your “Safe Place”
In calmer paintings of caves and grassy banks
Where you float or lie still and garlanded

Perhaps foreseeing your final day
When you remained there forever planning
To come back shortly to your beloved painting

Hitler Was Wrong

I’ve just entered
The subway in Queens
And it’s early for me
Two in the afternoon.
I’m tired and hung-over
Trying to figure out
How I’m going to make it
Through another night
When I notice
Some graffiti on a poster–
Yeah, you got it
A ‘Hitler was right’ tag
And it cuts through
The morning-after fog.

No way, I mutter
Under my breath
You’re absolutely wrong–
Hitler was wrong!
Think about it–
He was a small dark man
With a strange haircut
And film noir moustache
Telling people to worship
Tall blondes.
Didn’t he ever
Walk past a mirror?
A store window?
Or was he truly that blinded
By self-hatred?
I doubt it
Because it seems
He tried very hard
To disappear anyone
Who even remotely
Resembled him, so
He would never have to see
His reflection anywhere–
That way he could fantasize
He was a ravishing blonde
Sword in hand
Playing out
All the old myths.

Let’s move on.
He lost the fucking war.
It doesn’t matter
How many Jews
Or gypsies
Or Russians he murdered
Ten million Germans died
His supposed countrymen
His compatriots with the clean genes
Blonde Nordic giants
With gothic weapons
And designer uniforms
All dead
Killed following a small dark man
Who couldn’t
Face the fact
That he’d failed utterly
As a leader
So he blew his brains out–
Very brave, right?

The guy was dead wrong
A total loser.
And I’m positive
He’d never have reached
That pinnacle of power
If it hadn’t been
For another
Small dark man
A man beloved by the masses
Famous in France as Charlot,
In Japan and, yes
In Germany.
Hitler looked enough
Like Charlie Chaplin
That I truly believe
The Germans were following
The Charlie Chaplin
In their subconscious
When they goose-stepped off
To their fate.

And it hits me
As my train comes screaming
Into the station
That there probably
Wouldn’t have been
A Bill Clinton
Without Elvis,
Or a Donald Trump
Without The Terminator.

Counting Infinity

I wonder about the
infinity of light
that shattered
in a single Breath –
and the dust of Adam
that scattered, a
sweeping whirlwind of
limitless everywhere upon
the earth, and the stars
that Abraham counted –
numberless,
and distant,
and cold fire.

We counted
time by moonlight
and threads of
blue –
Exquisitely finite
and eternal,
a holy cadence
of one
plus one
plus one again
a never-ending measure
of binding
and grace.

So I wonder,
with all the counting
of all the endlessness
of stars and dust
and light
and time
and one
plus one
plus One –

what happens when
six million –
when twelve million –
when a thousand –
when a single
one
disappears
from infinity

Epilogue

for Dan Pagis

There is no train.
There is no station.
The stopping point
Begs recall…

There was a house.
A lamp.
A window
Through which

The forest entered
Following
A sky-rail
And tomorrow’s

Apocalyptic
Swan-song.

Exodus 33:16

For wherein shall it be known here that I
and thy people have found grace in thy sight?
Is it not in that thou goest with us?

How can I do justice
to a six foot pile
of seventy two
year old
shoes?

Picture
hóloskaustós
burnt whole spare
shoes display
indifferent stare
this we share
my God.

Two busy to mess unholy mass
sienna grave browns to olive cast
aways saved cover some poor feet
repurposed death eye witness
glaze fast past this past
in verse question-
my testament:

Grace in thy sight?
Goest with us?`
Shall it be?
Known?
Here?

Through blue eyes

I

She stands in line with the other prisoners,
at Auschwitz.
She is Jewish,
blue eyes,
still a teenager.
Her name is Irka.
There is a woman in line with her.
She is Polish and
wears a cross.
Irka asks her why
she is there,
with a cross.
The woman looks at her,
my husband,
she says.
Ruth

II

They load the train cars
with Jews leaving Auschwitz.
Everyone is given
a piece of stale bread,
for the journey.
Irka asks why they are not eating.
They look at her and answer,
Yom Kippur.
Atonement.
They honor G-d,
by fasting
and praying
for forgiveness.
Even now

Stone of remembrance

‘The Jews – they leave a stone for a lasting memorial’
Explained the young female tour guide at Auschwitz.
I left my heart there- it was too heavy with grief
to carry home.

Deep in the Forest 

using paint mixed with blood…from deer
who feed upon the land…where soil mixes
with remains of crushed human bones
he paints…alone…easel erect…sheltered
by Pine trees

his brush strokes are deft…free from constraint
first a pair of shoes…bound together by laces
next twisted spectacles…a white flag with red
cross…a railway track…disappears…over the edge
of canvas

a bird cries in the distance…soon forgotten
he packs away his palette…easel…treasured objects
slowly…walks barefoot to the village of Treblinka
painting…2/8/43…trussed under his arm…in the hope
someone…will take it off his hands

Where the Chips Fall

"This might be worth some money now."
My uncle shows me a tattered black case.
It’s unassuming, small, but nestled inside,
six pristine rows of poker chips
stamped with dark brown swastikas
wait for a game. "Found ’em in a dresser
that came with the house."

As my uncle pours a row into my hands,
I see shadowy soldiers flinging chips onto a table.
I smell sweat and cigarette ash,
hear the clatter of chips slapping
against one another. Clack. clack, clack,
like train wheels pulsing on rails,
like shells falling from guns.

Stacks of chips reward the players.
Straight: capture a family from the ghetto,
grandparents, parents, new baby boy.
Three of a kind: beat two pair,
hurl twin brothers to the ground.
Flush: crush five rabbis
wearing black yarmulkas,
then stack your winnings into mounds.

Clenching a chip in my fist, I feel
the coolness of its surface,
the heat of the swastika, a snarl of lines.
Six rows of chips, idle for decades,
lying forgotten, their value rising
as the players who used them pass
out of sight. Six rows ready for a new game.

First Publication: Cutting It, Oct. 2010 by The Lives You Touch Publications

Angels and Devils

Dedicated to Judy Meisel, Holocaust survivor

A host of angels
……..shed fierce tears
The devil sang out
……..in jubilation

Judy Meisel’s mother breathed
……..poisonous air in the Stuthoff gas chamber
Her daughters ran and hid in a ditch
……..Jewish pigs echoed in their tender ears

Autumn wheat never harvested
Looms left half threaded
Tapestries half finished
Lives cut short for no reason

Judy Meisel orphaned at age twelve
……..while her mother’s heart bled
The devil cut capers
……..as a host of angels shed tears

Jesus Christ, where were you?

No Escape

I’m visiting Auschwitz,
Spring day, 2010:
Flowers blooming,
Birds flying overhead,
Clouds soft and fragile.

Wait!

This is not a place for the living, the beautiful.
This is a lake of ashes, a smell of burned bones,
a watch tower where Nazis drank tea, shot bullets,
told jokes. Nearby are barracks where people slept
crowded as bedbugs; where I taste dirt
that holds their DNA.

I spend the night here.
I cannot sleep.
I can only take one breath, then another,
hoping I will be able to walk away in the morning.
I do. And I don’t. That is why
I won’t stop writing about Auschwitz.

Synagogue in Belgium

In a small town in Belgium
not far from the city square
at the crossing of two streets
where the neighboring houses
whose white paint has grayed
with age stands a long-abandoned
synagogue where a small vibrant
community of Jews prayed
Today what remains is a boarded up
dark building empty except for the
memories, except for the outline of
the six-pointed star over the main entrance
the star having been removed by the Nazis
and the sanctuary provided no sanctuary
when the Nazis rounded up Jews and
placed them in the synagogue until they
were shipped to the death camps leaving
the synagogue empty again
Very few residents today know what it is
or remember – but we remember and mourn