For Holocaust Memorial Day
Lest we forget …
I am re-publishing two poems to commemorate this blot on the human landscape:
Poem 1
THERESIENSTADT (a poem inspired by Claude Lanzman’s film Le Dernier des Injustes)
Theresienstadt, Terezin
Same thing_
A fraud
hatched in the head
of that venomous toad
Joseph Goebbels
Propaganda film shows
little Jewish girls with bows
in their head
playing with dolls and soft toys
little boys
playing with spades
kicking a ball
jumping about and laughing
scoffing cakes
drinking lemonade
their parents knitting
smoking a pipe
reading, gaily chatting,
listening to an orchestra
but all the time
the complicit Judenrat
is compiling lists
of who and how
to send to Auschwitz
or Birkenau
For termination.
It was like the immaculate
shiny uniform of the SS
adorning
psychopaths
and fanatical killers
Some inmates tried
to smuggle letters
exposing the lie
and were caught
The commander
ordered them to be hanged.
But there was no hangman.
Colonel Bergl summoned
the altester Edelstein
of the judenrat
Find me a hangman
or I’ll put a bullet in your head.
Edelstein swore he’d get one
by hook or by crook
and went round
cajoling, threatening, promising,
but no one took the hook
Then one man called Fisher
who everybody thought was a bum
said
I’ll do it if you give me
a whole glass of rum
and some baccy.
Bergl ordered some prisoners
to come watch
whilst Fisher hanged his batch
six letter-writers.
when it came to the seventh
Bergl started insulting him
calling him a dirty Jewish coward
No commander, he said
I’m no coward, I an an innocent Jew
and am not afraid of you.
Then he quickly put the noose
round his own neck
and jumped
but the rope broke.
Get on with it
get on with your job
you dirty Jewish slob
Bergl ordered Fisher
and Fisher said no more,
you can’t make me.
He knew the lore:
If the rope breaks
the prisoner must be freed
Bergl paid no heed
and instead he shot the man
he had called coward in the head
and did the same thing to Fisher.
Poem 2
Auschwitz 42
He pushed the door quietly
and tiptoed towards the boy
He was immersed in Grimm
and never heard daddy come in/
Arbeit Macht Frei
In one quick move
he wrapped his hands
round the boy’s eyes
for a game of surprise./
It’s you papa, I know it’s you
gushed out the little boy
squealing with delight
papa, you gave me such a fright/
He gave the boy his bath
and after they said grace
and had partaken of a tasty spread
he helped mother put the boy to bed./
He read him some more Grimm
and the boy was in hysterics
because Papa had a choice
of so many funny voices./
Don’t get him over-excited, liebling
she said, or he’ll never go to sleep.
You’re the apple of his eye
to him mein papa is nonpareil/
Later they sat on the balcony
watching what was left of the smoke
rising in the sky in its upward flight
on that bright starry Auschwitz night/
They drank vsop Cognac
and smoked English cigarettes
eating best French Camembert
while listening to Franz Schubert/
You look careworn tonight dear heart
she observed, you must have had an awful day?
You can say that again liebling
how I wish I was unfeeling/
The filthy Yid raised his eyes
and brazenly looked at me
Hatred I cannot say I mind
But to defiance I can’t be blind/
You see liebling, I had no choice
when you see a worm you crush it
I took my Luger and shot him dead
A bullet in his filthy Jewish head
