April 13-19: 17th Annual Yom HaShoah Issue

The Game

We would stay somewhere
On the hill of olive trees,
Playing hide-and-seek
Until late at night,
Calling the little sweet GOLDA
“LIGHT”[1] in our childish voice…

Ravens wearing crooked crosses flew over our heads,
Fighting vainly to dictate their game to us…
English translation by Ukë ZENEL Buçpapaj



[1] Source Language (Albanian): DRITA: A name given to female children
During the Second World War, in order to protect the Hebrews from the Nazis,
we used to baptize them with names coming from our own native culture.

A Letter and Four Numbers

She visited my children in California,
a grandma denied fulfillment as a genetic mother,
a grandma who always held out her arm
to show her tattoo,
a letter and four numbers I can’t remember.
But I do remember
this grandma fell in love
and helped a widowed man
raise two children who loved her, too.
She was a lady and also a medical doctor
with a body that had been mutilated
in a prison camp.
I remember she smiled with my father
who had served in the war
on a ship torpedoed by the Nazis.
Together they would speak
with smiles on their faces about life
in the USA today
while I pondered

a letter and four numbers
I still can’t remember.

I Remember You

Who will remember me
when I am gone?
No one, my heart weeps,
they are all here.
I will, a worm writes
crawling from the graves.
I will, a bird sings,
carrying the worm to the nest.
We will, the chicks chorus
learning to fly into the sky.
We will, the clouds cry
dropping your name among the rain.
Always, the earth sings,
as winter, hearing your voice,
becomes spring.

Scene from Yom Kippur 1972

It’s Yom Kippur
this screaming hot day
in Chicago 1972.
An intermittent parade
of orthodox men are walking
in silence to synagogue,
foreheads bright
with sweat.

They’re in uniform,
black hats, black coats
over their shoulders,
continents of sweat
breaking through
white shirts,
black ties stirring
in the breeze.

Five older men
have canes.
Two others
on walkers
have snakes
on their forearms,
reptiles from Auschwitz,
Belsen, Treblinka.

The numbers
in each tattoo
may be different
but the snakes
are as much
part of their uniform
as black hats,
black coats and black ties
on this screaming
hot Day of Atonement
in otherwise
oblivious Chicago.

The Diamond Merchant

A diamond is forever.
—B. J. Kidd

The buoys of memory have faint bells, noticed in the night.
I have left these chiming seamarks for the time of my return.
They ring out there, but faintly, so faintly I can hardly hear.
I think they want me to remember the severances of the soul,
if soul is more than mere electric tissue. If Death is king
and I do not reclaim what I have jettisoned, it goes to him.
I do not want the king to have my life. Therefore, each night at sea,
I must set out to find the ringing buoys and haul aboard
the lagan realities, for now my aging body, my emotional mal de mer,
lend renewed reality to the cold, damp camps. One numbered friend
should wear a wedding ring, another was engaged, and yet a third,
below and silent, had eyes like Tavernier blue diamonds set in Fabergé
eggshell by the master. I cannot put a name to the smiling face I see,
but she existed, who is now the faint dream of a denouement.

……Shalom alekhem……..Shalom alekhem

So now I sail all night to find them and their symbols, to
connect with them whatever seems appropriate, their rings,
their eyes, their ways: but not alone to find the persons
but to find the meanings of the persons to myself, the electric
mind, before the king should claim them from my life.

Go On, No Matter What

Ancient Chinese wisdom says
treat death like birth.
Two million birthdays
invite too many cousins.
We could never find enough bakeries.

Idiosyncrasies never get the chance
to rouse a smile, to feel the love.

Memories of children whirl like galaxies,
descend like bluebird feathers to the road.
No monument is as hollow
as a child no longer laughing.

Pünktlichkeit

with thanks to Steven M. Lowenstein

My father’s parents were Germans,
and they were Jews,
and they were born long ago,
one just before and one just after
the outbreak of the war
that was to end all wars,
but didn’t.

They came to New York in ‘37 and ‘38,
met and married and had a son.
From them, I have inherited
copies of Der Struwwelpeter
and Buddenbrooks,
a fondness for Riesling,
and pünktlichkeit.

Pünktlichkeit is beyond punctuality.
It is showing up ahead of time for movies,
meetings, and medical appointments;
submitting papers and assignments
safely before their deadlines;
and returning books to the library
at least one day prior to their due dates.

Pünktlichkeit is a preemptive way of life,
and not everyone admires it.
Even Rabbi Breuer of Frankfurt,
later of Washington Heights,
scolded guests who rang his doorbell
before the agreed-upon time.
"Zu früh ist auch nicht pünktlich."

But pünktlichkeit served my grandparents well.
They left Germany before the Kristallnacht,
before the MS St. Louis, before their neighbors
were called to trains that went first to France
and then to Auschwitz. Who knows
how many reported to the railways
before the hour they were told?

("Pünktlichkeit" was originally published in Moment magazine.)

Remembrance

an abundance of wine
a small bag of avocados
and parentheses

wrapped and ready
in this love poem to a lost soul
on this night of six million deaths

today is a gift
that’s why it’s called the present
if this is correct, press one

Caged

between veins and arteries,
vessels and capillaries
an Inventory of bone bars
between electric fences.

dark echoes explode
braked by bars
leaving a narrow place only to be
hung with a crooked body
between one shipment
and another.

What I Learned From Shoes

(Maidanek Death Camp, March, 2001)

The shoes rest in lonely piles,
Unfathomable piles,
In slowly rusting cages
That squeeze visitors
Into speechless single rows,
Ghost-like,
Even though they are privileged
To walk among the living.

The shoes still seek the feet
Of their murdered owners,
Still long to tickle their soles
With care-worn leather.

They are lonely,
These forlorn treasures,
Once deftly carved
By a loving master.
Yes, they are lonely,
Even as they share the cages
With 500,000 companions.

Here and there,
A splash of color
Pulls the eye from the rotting mass
Of gray and brown nothing.
A single red shoe flashes defiantly
In the dim half-light,
As if shouting, in pain and pride,
“They killed the beautiful lady who owned me,
But they cannot kill MY beauty!”

A visitor reflects
On the meaning of that red shoe.
How many dance floors felt the click
Of its sharp, elegant heel?
What cobblestones traced its journey,
As its owner ran, breathless,
To the waiting arms of her lover?

One does not ask about the lady herself;
Her identity was destroyed by gas and fire.
Only the shoe remains to testify,
A survivor that can walk no more.

What have I learned from shoes,
As I breathe their musty, living essence
In the darkness of this death-camp barrack?

I have learned
Each shoe has a story,
And each story belongs to a person,
And if one can only understand people
By walking in another person’s shoes,
Then I have walked a mile at Maidanek
In humanity’s shoes.

We may walk alone,
Stumble alone,
Struggle alone,
But we are never truly alone.
We go forward together,
Until we die,
And our shoes live on
To tell of our journey.

The approaching front

At daybreak,
forecasters predict,
the approaching front
will bring
its anticipated drizzle
of corpses
and an oppressive downpour
of traumatized and fleeing
while emanating
from the burning city
a crimson sky
will lighten
an otherwise
leaden landscape.
And the night?
Well, it’s initially dark
or darker, lacking
a scintilla of hope
save "life goes on"
and, in time,
tomorrow, most certainly,
will come
tomorrow…

Paste-Up

— After Paul Celan’s “Conversation In The Mountains”:

….Jew Klein meets Jew Gross amid the beauty of nature from which they are chronically veiled.
….The poor saps have nothing to call their own in a place where they won’t ever belong.

….….….Loathe the little Jew!
….….….….……Loathe the big Jew!

….….….Who don’t belong,
….….……Who have nothing,
….….………Who simply offend!

Pure words green & white,
…flow from the glaciers through
…the center of the mountains.

Pure speech not reckoned for Klein and Gross. — A journey in speech to themselves in the mountains,
…a journey to the unloved dead
…..in speech tried & true.
___________

— After Rilke’s “Duino Elegies”:

….When I had a knife & exhaled,
….….did the angels tremble?

….When I smashed the mirror
….….of my vanity,
….….….did they vanish in thin air?

Hitler Cups ‘Unintentionally’ Sold in German Store

Behind the roses, the cursive script, who’d notice
The faded swastika, the grey profile of Hitler?
Some Chinese designer picking up the old postage stamp,
Incorporated it thinking maybe to evoke nostalgia
For bygone catastrophes.
On the shelf three or four days before a sales clerk
Identified the image, they’d sold 175 ($2.70 each)
Gracing someone’s tea party
Or coffee klatsch, the matching rosy mugs, adding
Cream or sugar. Did they see whose face
Glared across the stamp behind the pretty print?
Back then who had a word to call it by? And now
Buying fish, the lady asks if I’d like to try the crab dip
And won’t take no thanks for an answer—
Allergies, she nods knowingly. No, kosher, I say
(though if I truly were I would not be there buying
Anything that shared close quarters with crustaceans)
And she says “oh!” “Oh, that’s okay,” she assures me,
Tells me how her dad was Polish
But he had many Jewish friends. The German store
Is buying back all the coffee cups with Hitler on them,
Offering $27 a cup, then smashing them. Earth to earth.

The thing is that stamp lurking in the background is rising
to the surface, that even if (or when) we think
it’s all in the past, letters arrive in the mail, someone decides
he has divine backing to go out and shoot other people,
how ’bout them crossing the parking lot, picked off
almost at random as long as they are Jews, or mistaken
for Jews due to an unfortunate proximity, as if it’s infectious.
That explains the stars, the tattoos, identity in poison ink.
The quiz asked how privileged are you, the quiz asked, have you
ever denied your religion in self-defense? No, I said.
That implies you have a chance.
And each question has the same value, as if
answering even one might not doom you.
The thing is that what rises to the surface bubbling up
is hope until it’s grief, grief. Just one immensity.

Fragile Window

we live during
a time
when survivors
still remember,
where
history’s hands
remain strong enough
to choke us

when memory
escapes, and
the hands
begin to shake,

the fragile window
closes

we listeners,
we storytellers,
we will open it again

It is the task
of all who live
during the time
of the fragile window.

Behind the Curtain

We choke and we breathe like we pray,
we choke, we believe we can pray when we won’t,
we choke when we open our mouths to breathe
but all prayer falls grey when we breathe
ashes to ashes, we choke with the soot on our lips,
with the words in our eyes — we see what we choke upon
upon you is the word, written, upon you,
and death comes from truth, death comes
from a fire that consumes when it’s summoned,
death comes from a beast with no appetite,
from a word that summons a beast and a truth,
to feast upon men who worship with fire, with fire we pray,
with fire we singe and we pray, we offer the burnings,
but gods don’t exist, there is only one truth in the fire,
only one truth that burns when it chokes, that burns
when consumed, in the hour of loons what dawns
is the ash that we fell upon, gunmetal grey like a sword,
words were never prayers, words were never truth,
the only truth is the fire that burns and that smolders.

When the flame has run out, beware the dead eaters of ash
who come bearing sermons among you, for faith has no words,
only works, and truth burns out a hole in the sky to inhale them.

We choke and we breathe like we pray,
and we pray like we’re fools,
bent kneed and bent backed til we cough up the ashes we swallow.
We choke and we pray like a Jew,
like a Jew in a camp is immortal, like a Jew in a cage turns to fire,
like a Jew burns when he chokes on the truth of the world
at the end of the railyard, at the end of his prayers.

With Apologies To Adorno

I know that Adorno said
It is barbaric to write poetry
after Auschwitz
so I’m not really going to do so,
but I did want to share one story,
real quick, if that’s alright:

Years ago, when I was twenty-three
and living in Washington D.C.
I met a German girl, I don’t remember
her name, but she had short hair
and a very erotic accent
that made me happy to be alive,
and we ended up having sex

and the whole time we were doing it
I was thinking of Adolf Hitler,
rolling in his grave, that some
suburban-born American Jew
was now doing the deed with
one of his beautiful countrywomen.

I got a lot of pleasure out of that.

In the morning I asked, “do you feel bad
about the Holocaust?” And she said,
“well, it’s a terrible legacy that we have
to wrestle with, but all we can do is learn
how to go forward, with sensitivity and care.”

“That’s fair,” I said, and I kissed her
on the mouth with my mouth,
and took us out for a Sunday brunch –
liverwurst for her; bagels and lox for me.

In the Forests of Lithuania

In the forests of Lithuania
Where bones and birch grow
Side by side
With lindens, limbs, and legs.

No amount of cutting or pruning
Can hide what once was sown
Now
Buried deep within the rich dark soil
In monstrous mounds
Or
Pitiful pits of death.

Israel Iwler and His Peaceful Cow

After seven hundred
days of night
he emerged,
a stunned Jew-bird
on bleeding
hands and knees,
light-blinded by
the years in his
deep cave home.

He came into
the presence of
the green-sprung
world again,
and remembered:

a sun, a moon,

the roof of stars.

It was when
he saw his own
cow, dumb, peaceful,
and not frightened
in the quiet field,
that he fell down

and howled;
savage
beneath a drift of
wind and heedless blossoms
he clawed and wept
and tore apart
the abundant ground.

Why You did this to Me?

While My father stood sentry
at Dachau; a skull spoke to him
and said: “Why you did this to me?”

When he told me this,
he cried.

Bees and the Breeze

They were dying in the gas chamber.
First he heard yelling, distinct screams
then it quieted down, sounded like the buzzing
of bees in the bee-hive, muted, distant,
low murmuring, and then,
after twenty minutes – silence.

Her father was just fifteen, but he was strong.
In Majdanek, his job was to go in
and carry them out after that.

* * *

Not bees, her mother said, the whole Ponary forest
was singing. Distant voices carried by wind
above treetops. Oooooh, Aaaaaah.
The screams floated in and out
with the breeze –barely heard, attenuated.

The shots were louder, went on all day
like an army of mad woodpeckers,
drilling a hole in your brain.

Pleasant Bay Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

Today there’s entertainment at Pleasant Bay Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
A trio: accordion, violin, even a singer
The small room is filled with people with walkers, wheelchairs, health aids
a few “residents” enter slowly
by themselves
to find chairs

I can’t give you anything but love
Blue Skies
Rozhinkes mit mandlen
Besame Mucho
Jambalya

Now comes: Shein vidi livone and Abi gezunt

At the program’s end, a tiny woman under 5 feet
……..88 maybe 90 a shock of white hair drawn back at the neck
approaches the violinist

Quietly, fondly gazing at the violin, she stretches out her tiny arm to stroke it
“I played the violin for 12 years”
“Why did you stop?”
“Hitler happened”
..He happened

The Ghosts of  Europe

Inspired by a photograpgh by Shing

I alone wander this rural mountain,
sharpened gravestones like teeth in
the cruelly exposed mouth of winter

my shoulders stiffen, eyes tire from
unblinking vigilance. I dart the moon’s
silhouette above icy branches starved

for the luminescence of sun-snowy day.
Shadows of the fallen fists swiftly charge
the air with the unspeakable denial of six

million dead whose chorus, unbound
by time will never cease until the dirge
...................enfolds the world.

How a World Ends

Under the shell of storm,
under a sun of baked clay,
near the fence of shadow,
near the braided wire and German
shepherds, within the stench of heat
and factory, within a disease of
hate and a homecoming of hate:

Here they labored because of guns
and prejudice, evil and orders.

How can I say the world ended
in 1936, in 1939, in the 1940’s
when a world still exists?
I can say this when one life
sacrificed to hatred vanishes
from the world of the living,
then, yes, the world has ended.

parallel universe

after The Notebook
(Le Grand Cahier)

twin brothers
learn from each
other self
reliance

journaling the same autobiography
fraternal instinct over barbed distances

2 leaves
from the same notebook

leave without falling
running parallel
leave by elevation

Survival

"my father was a good person
until they took his glasses"
the Student claims
to be the daughter of Pol Pot’s Butcher
the man I mentioned in a poem
who burned vaginas shocked testicles
ten years old forced to watch
she grasped her father’s sacrifice
"he did it so I could escape
I made it past land mines
a nice couple adopted me in Thailand
I’m an American citizen
I read your book! I’ve been looking for you!"
I feel her breath on my face
her final paper discusses the gulags
she tries to understand Stalin’s position
Freshman Composition
I can accept anything well argued

one day without correction
spouting whales merge with glistening waters
scolding squirrels blend with bark
I can’t read write drive a car
life before myopia
at five jumping fearlessly to catch a ball
then six years old measles darkened room
reading with flashlight return to school
unable to see strings on marionettes
first frames spangles in the rims
High School Geometry humiliation
at the blackboard "F" for faulty calculation
my uncle offers laser surgery
he can’t comprehend why I need three prescriptions
"you will look like a movie star!" he promises

"of course they took the spectacles first"
the Poet speaks of Auschwitz
her parents endured the forest
her grandparents the camp
she describes rat stew leaves twigs
contraband salt smuggled wine surreptitious prayer
her Bobbe tussling with bunkmates for blanket room
giggling like a girl at a pajama party
raised Catholic in Poland my Friend
learned silence in the schoolroom
drank blood soup in the mountains
now bows to Inanna
"after release everyone searched piles
found shoes and lenses that worked”

I imagine the concentrated beam in my cornea
would my eyes resemble pansies?
would I focus the microscope and not crash the slide?
suppose it were my niece on the table?
suppose it were she who ran?
I roam the dismal streets worrying about The Book
Cousins and Colleagues stare down from lit windows
is there time for completion? time for amends?
who might I become without
the pressure on my nose
the adjustment for the middle distance?

included in The Vast Unknowing
Infinity Publishing

Fat Chance 2

Alois Brunner
strong right arm
of Adolph Eichmann
during the heyday
of the Holocaust

responsible for deporting
more than 125,000 European Jews
to Nazi death camps
during World War II

Confused with another Brunner, Anton
Anton was hanged for war crimes
Alois escaped

He died
so it is said
unrepentant

his one regret
that he did not kill
more Jews

The fall of the Berlin Wall
halted one extradition attempt

He also survived
two bomb blasts

The Jews deserved to die
he said

If I had the chance
I would do it again

Pray history
never repeats itself.

Garland, TX
December 2014

I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know

The right lens of my spectacles is lost
But I can see (with some difficulty).
My shoes are filthy with who knows what
But I walk, while others cannot.
My teeth are strong, my legs are weary
But they serve me as well as they can.
My ribs could use some meat
But at least they’re not cracked, only bruised.

Sadie is gone. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
So why do I try to go on?
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.
Someday somehow this may change
But better or worse will it be?
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.

Five Marks, Bundesrepublik

As prompts for our poems this morning,
you offer snapshots and one coin, an eagle,
wings outspread. Who pulled it from the fire,
this broken song? You can’t know I’m learning
my Hebrew consonants like stones, vowels,
small dots and dashes. No, you can’t know
my high-school girlfriend’s father, a courtly
man with blue numbers on his wrist, never
talked about the Holocaust. Perhaps, you’ve
heard Roosevelt refused to bomb the train tracks
leading to the death camps? I know almost
nothing about the side of my family
that vanished. In your photo,
cherry trees blossom in Munich.
In an art gallery near the Tiergarten,
citizens gaze at abstract paintings on white walls.
At a train station in Paris under fluorescent lights,
men and women file off a ghost-gray train,
and I wonder if, on Rosh Chodesh, evening of a new
moon just minted, a certain angel rides above train stations,
asking, “Why?” and another angel asks, “Why not?”

My Father’s Friend

On my father’s annual visits
To these bright blue skies
He would make more friends
Than I have in almost forty years

Particularly in a prefab on the next corner
A man who ran a small synagogue
Proudly born in the same year
Chassidic backgrounds drawing them close

Wanted to welcome him in the new building
But my father passed away too soon
So I put up ark curtains there
Specially inscribed in his memory

On her visits my mother continued going there
And would speak to my father’s friend
In their mother tongue Hungarian
And in time I memorialized her there too

Last week my father’s friend passed away
In a visit to comfort his wife
Made unrecognizable by disease
No longer able to leave her home

Finally found out something about
The man with the constant but nervous smile
Survivor of a large Marmarosh family
Butchered during the Holocaust

Pioneer who fought
In the Katamon area
Where he set up his home
And raised four daughters

Long-time Ministry of Welfare worker
As retiree worked to rebuild local synagogue
And set up organization to help handicapped children
A good man left his mark and we all go on as if he never were

on: The Importance of Words.

Sometimes I’d think I was dead before I was born.
Limp legs, twisted limbs. Arms that moved slack
in the slight breeze. The cot wound metal arms
around me to contain me. The cold threat not

optional, no comfort in the thin blanket. Over
the cot was a word. Stark on white paper.
Black letters – that the Nurses pointed at.
The monster children, dark babies. Two left.

The boy who was not my twin in the cot next to me, cried.
Over his cot the black letters spat hatred at me.
He was thin as an Amsterdam dwarf, all his royal
features edged with flint. He didn’t want

to be his word. I crowded his world with my one
word. Neither word was the one we started with.
The Nurses poked through the bar with iron fingers
to see if we were fatter than they expected.

The oven was waiting. On our faces we had numbers
not words. The numbers made us expendable…
One word kept a child alive. Sometimes…
our words killed us. Later I lost all meaning.

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
is taken
from infinity

The Mothertree

For Blumke Katz

Prostrated
before the tree
in the middle
of the cemetery,
she prayed
for her mother,
buried somewhere
in that mass grave:
for her
and so many
other murdered
mothers & fathers,
sisters & brothers
grandparents,
there in the middle of
Svintsyán, Lithuania,
lost shtetl
in the middle
of Eastern Europe
where Jews
bought & sold,
cooked & ate,
studied & prayed
worked & dreamed.
Once.

Mama, where are you?
All those long years
alone,
far away in cold,
oh so cold, Siberia,
each night I spoke
with you
in my sleep.
You were just a dream.
Now—at last—
after the Germans
with their brownshirts left,
and the Russians
with their redshirts also left,
I have returned,
I have awakened,
I am here—
but where are you?

Dear Tree,
………………..Dear Mother,
Yisgadal
………………..v’yiskadash . . .

Needing the Lies

Spices, a poultice—–
Mustard, ash, salt—–
Time is crawling in an ooze,
The blur of fevers wafting,
A sticky itch, persistent,
This suspicion
That doors of disappointment
Are beginning to swing…
Cranes, cranes
Represent the spirit, the white,
The eastern wings of monogamous
Hope—–
Cranes for the souls of soldiers,
Cranes for us in our origami
Of connected tissue…

Water, wind—–
The quintessential we
Borne aloft by these elements,
Carried forward to the Beyond
Of volcanic basalt five fathoms under…

Right off our coast a ship goes down, &,
On the air, 24 wars, one for each hour,
Brings fresh reports that peace
Would be newsworthy…

Oh cranes,
Deliver a poultice.
Years later the cattle cars still chuff & I grow,
A volcano, violent with tenderness,
Needing belief in the home

all they could see

was the mud blackened deposits
beneath the roiling, red sea
only their blind forward movement
progress in a firmament on non-miracles;
only mud below,
oodles of the viscous stuff
soil ret with earthly deposits
a subastral, gooish effluvium,
oozing squishily around mud-wrapped toes
and old women wailing
as they fall flat-faced into the mash

they could not hear the desperate hoof beats,
the curdling voices slogging through the mud
nor the waters inundating the truculent horde
swallowed whole into the turgid waters
while the bondsmen waded to the shore

eschewing thanks to one another–
back-clapped sighs and the mud temporality left behind
owed them nothing
victory of the feet
loss in the mud-stained eyes.

Never Forget

We remember the plague of German Reach to exterminate and annihilate our people…
The unimaginable reality that this Evil Force had such power…such legs beneath it…
We remember that MILLIONS of innocents were heaped in piles as though they were old, stained burlap…
ready to be burnt as a result of only their uselessness…
We remember that our simple ability to "trust" was forever lost during these calamitous years…
We became something MORE than a "PEOPLE"…
We became a "CAUSE" somehow…
Indignant…Defiant….
Our innocence was buried along with our families beneath the rubble of bodies there in the notorious "Camps"….
We now are forever saddled with the almost insurmountable MISSION of
"moving on"….of "living well"….
of attaining success…happiness…even freedom ….
while all at once "putting history aside" and "NEVER FORGETTING"….
And we SHALL BE TRIUMPHANT ….
for ultimately…
This is our destiny….

Reasons

cause they smelled of sulfur
cause they tortured hosts
caused children’s blood conversion to matzah and red wine

cause they were filthy
cause they were poor
caused typhus and the plague

cause they stabbed Germany in the back
cause they had polluted blood
caused a biological struggle for the entire human race

cause they were rich
cause they sold glittering trash
caused the economy to collapse

cause they were socialists
cause they were Bolsheviks
caused the Russian revolution

cause they were assimilated
cause they were converted
caused a threat to German Volk

cause they were human beings like
………fleas were animals

cause a goat does not become a horse
……..even if its forefathers were in the same stall

cause they could

cause they did

Auschwitz

Cold and worn, I sit crouched in the corner of the train.
My clothes and hopes are torn, too.
Gloom paints my mind. God has turned blind.
In the snow there is death and stain.
Cold winds sting… I shiver to sleep.
Silence.
My family and friends huddle close… as the train stops… slowly.
I peer outside, lanterns and lights lit.
I see the sign and I shudder:

Welcome To Auschwitz

I am separated. Insulted. Harassed. Humiliated.
Branded with a pink triangle.
I close my eyes hoping to be taken away by my guardian angel.
I am led to a small prison- like hole.
Others like me, their spirits stole.
Gaunt. Starved. Rot and poison, forced to eat.
The guards take me down- hold me to the ground.
They spit and they rape me… laughing,
"You queer kike, we know you like!"
They all take turns as my friends watch in a trance,
others prefer to shut their eyes, only to periodically glance.
The German Nazi bastards!
They have made a theatrics of me.
Day after day. One by one. My friends disappear…
With tears in my eyes I fear.
I am so thin I can barely stand. I am weak.
They’re trying to kill me. I pray them to be damned.

Today is gray.
The world is snowing and moaning.
Led one by one we are stripped.
The moment terrifying, insanity fully gripped.
Naked.
Then commanded to run.
For them it’s all fun.
Suddenly they aim their guns.
I don’t look back on this mounting attack.
Shots are fired and bodies collapse.
I am so slow… my feet numb.
I give myself up, body and soul.
My wasted body falls with a thud in the snow.
I can no longer move. How I long to feel my mother’s hands sooth.
A boot stomps my face. Blood I taste. The snow is splattered.
The flesh on my face tattered.
For an instant, in my mind, I see my family,
separated from me.
I watched them ushered into the showers.
Doors close. Screams. Agony.
I could do nothing. The stench of their deaths absorbed in my skin.
An omen soon coming.
Cold.
Ice fills my mouth.
My eyes no longer can shut.
The black seeping and surrounding.
The pain in my body released.
Death becoming.

Temples of Genocide

The Cambodian killing fields:
Bones everywhere.
Skulls enclosed in great temples.
During heavy rain,
teeth and cartilage
rise from the mud.

Auschwitz:
Battered suitcases
names still attached— Haim Hoffmann,
Ilona Aron, Arul Vachtenheim.
And thousands of shoes.
We chant their names, time for two
thousand names, there are nine
million names; face down
on the earthen floor of the barracks
I taste the dirt that holds their DNA .

I collect skulls— a coyote
my husband found in a Colorado canyon
when he stooped down to take a shit,
a marmoset that I traded for
in the Amazon Jungle, various raccoons
rabbits and birds. I keep them
on holy places around my house,
altars where I sit
to pray, to talk to my mother,
my father, my son’s friend
who took his own life.

In Auschwitz the rabbi has us pray
for the Nazis; I pray the alphabet
and leave the rest
to God.

Holocaust Survivor

I saw him on the subway
………..the tattoo clearly visible

96477

on his left forearm
………..in blue, like a vein

not many people on the train
………..probably noticed or knew

what it meant
………..or the badge of courage

it represented:
………..a survivor of the Holocaust

and more – a survivor of
………..a concentration camp,

the horror of death
………..behind his eyes

as he glanced at me
………..knowing I understood

the meaning of those numbers
………..as if they were a part of me,

as if I too wore them,
………..just by knowing.

He was a small man,
………..perhaps eighty years old,

maybe only in his seventies
………..but looking older

for what he had been through
………..the terrible things

he must have seen
………..when the Germans

slaughtered his people
………..as if they were

meaningless cattle.
………..Perhaps his family

was among them as were
………..so many families –

their culture and history
………..handed down from

father to son in the ancient tradition,
………..the holidays celebrated

with meaning, an annual reminder
………..of the history of the Jewish people,

celebrated in light and warmth
………..and the comfort of home,

with family and, perhaps,
………..a few friends,

a festive time for joy and prayer
………..recalling the hardship

of the forefathers, but no hardship
………..like the tattooed survivor

who saw what human eyes
………..should never see:

piles of gold nuggets
………..extracted from Jewish mouths,

gold rings pried from
………..Jewish fingers stiff and cold,

jewelry taken from Jewish women
………..as broken promises of freedom

or scraps of bread for children
………..whose fate diamonds could not alter

who smelled what human nostrils
………..should never smell:

rotting human flesh, burning human flesh,
………..the camps where life was death,

a living hell
………..where devils wore swatzikas

worshipped an anti-god,
………..evil forever scarring

the hearts and souls of the human race,
………..yet there remains this survivor

who lived in a time
………..in which no human should have to live

who survived when others perished
………..his story is unknown

except for the tattoo
………..the look behind the eyes

that reveals the pain of his life,
………..suffered and remembered

each day, each hour, each minute.
………..For how can a conscience forget

such evil, such destruction, such death,
………..yet the survivor exits the trolley

walking slowly, holding the woman
………..who is his wife, the walk revealing

a different pain which he must also endure
………..each day as a reminder of man’s inhumanity

to man, a deed worse than any in history,
………..though others today try to trivialize it

by robbing its name – Holocaust –
………..as if any tragedy could match

the gruesome truth of
………..Auschwitz or Dachau

Treblinka or Bergen-Belsen
………..as if a death for political gain

can equal the genocide of
………..six million people

merely because they were born
………..Jews in Europe and lived there

practiced their faith
………..when others had none

save the gods of war and murder
………..the others, with no hope followed,

because it is easier to blame
………..the weak and oppressed;

the ones who are different,
………..than to acknowledge their own weakness.

It is easier to throw rocks
………..than to build homes,

to burn books than to read them,
………..easier to leave fields unplowed

and march to war
………..easier to kill than to save lives.

This survivor had seen it all and
………..survived to ride the trolley