Oif Litte
Mir hobben zig dort gevoint eibikeit
Vos hot geven uns baloinung?
Gespolter kep und geshorene borden
Und a hogelen fun koilen
Secheiniem hoben uns geshon
Secheiniem vie geven bakant!
Goyim geven freint.
Kinder vie geven shpiledik
Blitzdik unz geveden
Gribber gevorren bagrobt
Tsu bahalten unser gebrogene kerper
Und farfoilte geshmiel
Denkmoil tsu unzer neshomes
Faloren tsum himmel!
Zey hobben farmogen unz elteren voiningen
Obgedekled unzer farmegen
Farnichten und leikenen
Kedelnit in Hell tsu Brennen!
(On Lithuania
We resided there for eons/What was
our Reward?/Broken Heads, Shorn
Beards/And hail of bullets
Our neighbours beset us/Neighbors
who were known/Goyim who had
been friends/Children which were
playmates/Suddenly turned on us!
Pits which were dug/To hide our
broken bodies/And rotted flesh/
Memorials to our spirits/Abandoned
to heaven
They possessed our parental homes/
Stripped of what was owned/
Destroyed and looted/Taken and
denied/Lest they burn in Hell!)
Maurice Skikne
Daylight after Darkness
For no life is without heartache or pain
And from it we gain
Some essence of resilience and courage
As we put one foot in front of the other
And slowly recover
Until we are able to walk again and discover
The veracity that time itself is the salve
We step tenuously in a new direction
With an altered self for support and protection
We find ourselves in another reality
Where the legacy of precious memory
Binds us and reminds us
In lasting connective continuity
To look back honouring that which has been lost
Yet making our own life up to the task
Securely tucked in our backpack of sorrow
Is the direction which prompts us not to borrow
Time from the past and that which is gone
But to move forward and painstakingly press on
To the progression of our own story
– and another tomorrow.
And though the view ahead is sometimes obscured
By the intermittent blurring of recollective tears
With no conception of how our journey ends
Still meeting cliffs and dips and slides and bends
And building blocks masked as blows and knocks
We continue to explore what lies before
And just as there are set-backs and grief
There is aspiration, hope and satisfaction
Of a job well done, of hardship overcome
And of kindness, strength, love and appreciation
Charlotte Cohen
Silence – Auschwitz-Birkenau
If trees could speak I dread what they’d tell me.
With the wisdom of age
With the hind and foresight of sage
With courage
An explanation:
Multitudes of beings metamorphosised
Hairless, stripped of individuality
Skeletal, starved of spirituality
Nameless, deprived of dignity
Crippled by the beasts that rule as man over man
And never seen again.
Multitudes of beings were exterminated
Herded into the place
The place from which beings do not return
Unless in a pillar of smoke
But we reaped the fertile rewards of their ashes
Silent observance- we tree-beings cannot speak.
But, multitudes of human beings can.
They allege, articulate, assert,
Converse, communicate, convey,
Deliver, declare, enunciate,
Express, pronounce, state,
Shriek, whisper, gasp,
Demand, command, and
Pray
Multitudes of beings- bystanders
Without protest or analysis or criticism.
Dumb. Voiceless. Mute.
Today, not only us trees bare witness.
Evidence remains.
Human beings’ ash, human beings’ testimony,
human beings’ atrocities against human beings
remain.
And againHuman silence
I hear it. It’s deafening.
Gabriella Hyman
