I am a Healer
I am a healer – my place of work: Hadassah.
Young girls and boys, limbs torn, bodies bleeding,
Cry out in fear and pain.
I cry for the mother’s anguish, for the father’s
tears.
But their physical hurt is not my work –
I heal their heads, their minds –
I return to them their youth poisoned by terror.
My patients are Arab and Jew, adult and child,
I make no distinction,
Just like the indiscriminate bomb makes no
distinction.
Last year, Sarah, my friend, was shot
While driving to see Rachel, her daughter.
I was deeply angered –
But not enough to make me forget my oath.
I am a healer, my place of work: Hadassah.
Then they built a wall.
Too late for Sarah – but not too late for Rachel.
Rachel can visit her mother’s grave in Jerusalem
Without being shot.
Those in cities far away – strangers to terror –
Who sit in barricaded, safe homes
So they and their loved will not be shot –
Sit and criticise the wall –
Let them tear down the first stone.
Rodney Mazinter
Need
Your white bulk beckons
The salve you bear within your hulk
Makes me your slave
I salivate ….
My back blocks out
The blackness
Of not only the night …
.
I grab with greed
Cheese, a peach
A piece of pie
Anything …
I feed
With abandon
To fill the void
And appease the need
Charlotte Cohen
.
Rhodes in Mourning – 70 Years
In these narrow streets, I am wandering around
In beautiful Rhodes. I am searching and searching,
In the annihilated Jewish Quarter, I keep on going.
Only empty houses are facing me,
Yet, joyful faces are surrounding me,
But they are not the faces of my people.
The Germans invaded Rhodes,
And took away the descendants of Abraham.
In one single day, my Djudería expired,
And since, Rhodes, my beloved,
Has been dressed in mourning.
Seventy years have gone by
Since the Jews of Rhodes entered Auschwitz;
Auschwitz! Residence of death!
Seventy years later, I entered Auschwitz.
I walked in the footsteps of my brethren who
suffered.
The sky was the colour of ash,
I wanted to weep, but I could not.
The mist shrouded the infinite
Expanse of this sad and soulless place
From where tall chimneys had spat
From their wombs fumes of flesh and bone.
On the 16th of August 1944,
1900 Rhodian Jews went up in smoke.
600 – with sunken eyes, forlorn looks,
Terrified, shaven, tattooed, skin and bones –
Were destined to suffer.
A little more than a hundred survived.
A handful only are still with us.
In Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen,
Terezin or Mauthausen,
Rhodes, Cos or Salonika,
I hear Jews or Non-Jews mumbling:
“Walk in our footsteps!
We shall always be present!
Invisible, indiscernible, impalpable!
Are we the wandering spirits
Of these ghastly camps?
Are we condemned to roam endlessly?
Our faces have lost their features,
We have neither sepulchres nor shrouds,
We are smoke, ash and bone meal.
Are we the fruit of human evil?”
As the smoke dissipating in the air,
As the waves disappearing in the sand,
As the sun hiding in the horizon,
As the flame about to die,
As the story book coming to an end,
The Holocaust without its survivors
Shall enter some, but alas,
Not all the history books.
Isaac Habib
