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I am in hiding in a loft over a stable, in a village, with good people. The risk of death hovers over me, as it does over all Jews these days, and the slightest lapse of vigilance on my…
“Even if you kill us, we will leave traces,” insists the poet. Poems such as this one affirm the power of humanity even in the midst of atrocities committed by neighbors.
The Holocaust has always been a problem in Polish postwar consciousness. The real issue is not the question of Polish complicity with the Germans during the war or of whether the Poles did all they…
Some two years ago Nata had been deported from Warsaw to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Now she was free, but still unable to come to grips with life, so newly regained, though in the first breath…
Among the illegal publications that appeared in Poland during the Nazi occupation, one can find a small anthology of poems entitled Z otchlani, from the Abyss. This modest volume, published by the…
19 August 1943
Today, dear Anka, is the anniversary of your Golgotha, tomorrow the anniversary of your death. A year has passed since I last saw you. You see, Anka, I do not believe in God and never…
The Jews held cattle dealers in contempt. They considered them illiterate louts in no way different from peasants. My grandfather never let a cattle dealer into his house. Into the barn yes, but never…
This urn will be made of fired clay
Of native soil, from Poland, my country
In it are lodged the ashes of my parents
My brothers, daughter, and wife.
The urn will be simple, like a jug
With a small…
And so its pain is unremitting, like an amputated leg
This ash and feathery void chafes at us,
They say two willows were seen in Mazowsze
wearing green prayer shawls also a market stall
in the middle…
From Hoza Street and Marszalkowska
carts were moving, Jewish carts:
furniture, tables and chairs,
suitcases, bundles
and chests, boxes and bedding,
suits and portraits,
pots, linen and wall…