—From the testimonies of Judy Abrams, Johnny Jablon, and Michael Kutz
Adult
Being ten and small, my task with the partisans
to crawl to the police station, place the dynamite,
connect the wires, a personal victory
avenging the death
of my family
my people.
Blue Sky in My Mind
Where I would go
sometimes
when they beat me.
Both This and That
To rape, Nazis
ripped the bras off
Jewish girls. For the Resistance, Jewish girls
in their bras
smuggled weapons.
Catholic
The game now began in earnest. There was now only
Ilona and nobody would spit at her,
call her “Büdös Zsidó” (Stinking Jew).
She did not wear a yellow star. She had become
a “real” Hungarian girl.
Commander Göth
On his white horse, he says to the dog Jew
and the dog jumps at [Johnny holds his hand like teeth
to the base of his throat.]
Festive Wild Chestnuts
Where I would go in my mind
to remember my mother.
God
When I was ten years old, I heard the last cries—
Jews reciting Shema Yisrael on their way
to mass graves in my hometown of Nieśwież.
God
To adopt a negative opinion of God would have meant
giving up the struggle to survive and especially
giving up on my mother’s last words to me.
Hope
Every time the guard,
I don’t know his name, every time
I pass him by, he gave me
a piece of bread.
Hunger
We traded tablecloths
for black market potatoes. One week we had carrots.
Carrots, carrots, carrots.
Ingenuity
I couldn’t see out of the grave, so I made
a step ladder of the dead.
Limited Sell by Date
I actually thought
that this was kind of a game.
Luck
I was in the “hospital” with typhoid.
After a few days with typhoid, they come and shoot you.
The doctor, he knew me from school.
He said Yanick, get up get a broom.
They shot all the other guys.
Lucky
One of the beasts started to beat my dearest mother.
I threw myself on him with the fist.
I can still hear
his sadistic laugh together with my mother’s scream.
Then I felt a blow to my head, and I lost consciousness.
I was left for dead. They left me bleeding
on the floor. I had lost everything.
Miracle
At the grave, the German, I looked at him.
He shout to me Jump! I was frozen.
So, he took the gun over the head at me,
and I fell in the grave. I fell in the grave
the dead on top of me.
Neighbors
They would say to the Germans He’s a Jew,
He’s a Jew. When the word got around
that the Jews are moving to the ghetto, the whole villages around Krakow
came in to rob the Jews. Hundreds of them on the street
just waiting on the street for the Jews.
[To show anticipation Johnny’s hands shake.]
Oh
Although I had always hoped
I would learn the haftorah for my bar mitzvah,
I now sensed
this would never happen.
Oh
They made us to undress completely naked,
completely naked. Some of the women
tried to hold themselves, not to expose [Michael crosses his arms
below the angle of the camera].
Party Bus
Lithuanians, Ukrainians,
Belorussians drunk and
reeking of vodka all
with automatic weapons
on their shoulders, revolvers
on their hips, uniforms
already covered in blood.
Revenge
Well, I survived.
Well, I
survived.
Well,
I
sur viv ed.
w
e
l
l
I
s
u
r
v
i
v
e
d
Righteous Gentiles
How can you say this child is Jewish?
She’s a better Christian than you, you punk.
Strangers
My parents came back
from Bergen-Belsen.
Unrailed
At this point they were not deporting
Jews to Auschwitz anymore. They simply
took the Jews to the Danube, lined them up,
shot them into the icy waters.
Witness
I will always remember
my mother’s last words to me.
If, by miracle, you survive, you must bear
witness and tell the free world
what happened to us.
X
[interviewer off camera]: How did you feel?
People will want to know.
How did you feel?
This poem was composed using phrases from the memoirs and interviews of three Canadian Holocaust survivors published through the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. As featured on the Azrieli Foundation’s site Re:Collection, words from Judy Abrams’s Tenuous Threads, Johnny Jablon’s A Lasting Legacy and Michael Kutz’s If, By Miracle have been reproduced with the permission of the Azrieli Foundation.
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