An Oak Wood Piano on Kristallnacht
The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
Into a ditch. Father, he heard the voice of his son, you must
Go on. Zindel took the hand of his son and climbed out of
The trench. With his wife, a son and daughter on his side
They continued the march. But the SS guards did not stop
The savage whipping of the deportees. Blood was flowing
On all sides.
The Grynszpan family were Polish Jews from Hanover.
When the Nazis came to power they became outcasts.
In October 1938 they were expelled from Germany
And deported to Poland in a group of 12,000 Jews.
They were taken by train to the frontier town Neubenschen
And from there on foot to the German-Polish border.
When they reached the border heavy rain started to fall.
The Nazis confiscated their money. They had no food to eat.
Polish officers arrived and began to inspect their papers.
They admitted the refugees with Polish passports,
Housing them in military stables. Old, sick and children
Were herded together in most inhuman conditions.
One of the first things that Zindel did in Poland was to send
A postcard to his seventeen year old son Hirsch in Paris.
When Hirsch Grynszpan read the family’s tribulations
He became furious. His heart was filled with rage and hatred
And he decided to avenge their sufferings. On the morning
Of November 7, Hirsch entered a gunsmith’s shop on rue
Faubourg Saint-Martin and purchased a 6.35 calibre pistol
With a box of 25 bullets, for 235 Francs.
Then he took a ride on the Metro to the Solferino stop
And walked to the German Embassy at 78 rue de Lille.
Hirsch told the receptionist that he has some documents with him.
He was received by Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary.
When the German diplomat closed the door Hirsch pulled out
The gun. “You are a filthy Kraut”, he said, “and in the name of
12,000 persecuted Jews here is the document”. He fired five
Bullets from point blank range at vom Rath. The diplomat died
Two days later of his wounds.
The assassination came as a godsend thing for the Nazis.
Hitler denounced it as part of a global Jewish conspiracy
Against Germany. It became a pretext for the well-orchestrated
Pogrom of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.
During the night of November 9-10,1938, in every place
Throughout the Third Reich, Storm Troops attacked Jews
And Jewish institutions.
Hitler’s henchmen burnt down or destroyed in Germany
Nearly two hundred synagogues. They burst into Jewish houses,
Broke the glass of Jewish businesses and beat up Jews wherever
They found them. About ninety people were murdered
And thousands of others were wounded in the street violence.
The Nazis also arrested thirty thousand Jews and sent them
To concentration camps in Buchenwald, Dachau,
And Sachsenhausen. And on top of all this, the Reich
Cynically imposed a billion mark penalty
On the Jewish Community to pay for the damages.
In Berlin hundreds of truncheon swinging storm troops
Led the mob in smashing up the glass plate windows
Of Jewish stores. In the Jewish neighbourhoods of German
Cities the Nazis lit bonfires. They threw on them to burn
Torah scrolls, prayer books and whole libraries. Thousands
Of Germans joined the Storm Troops in the atrocities.
But many resented the pogrom. People watched in horror
The roundup; they cried silently behind their curtains.
On a third floor balcony in Leipzig
Storm Troops shattered a balustrade and pushed
An upright oak wood piano over the edge. It plunged like
A black wingless dragon and fell helplessly to the street.
It crashed on the pavement with a shocking clamour.
Its wooden casing had split. The strings stripped bare
Stood in the middle of the wreckage as an orphan harp
Screaming with a heartbreaking outcry.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Related quotes
The Boy Who Came Down from the Cross
He stood beside his father before tumbling into a deep pit.
A split second later a volley of shots were fired.
His father fell with the others into the abyss, shot dead.
But sixteen year old Zvi Michalowski was alive.
It was a pitch dark night when he climbed out of the pit.
He was naked and his body covered with blood.
He heard the Lithuanian executioners singing, laughing,
Celebrating the shooting of the Jews.
They were all drunk by now.
As Hitler’s armies were advancing on Moscow
The murderers arrived with an Einsatzgruppen unit.
They entered Eishyshok, an old Jewish town in south Lithuania,
On September 25 of 1941. On the same day and the next
The paramilitary SS units massacred about 5,000 Jews
From Eishyshok and adjacent villages.
Zvi Michalowski knew the place like the palm of his hand.
He passed the Jewish cemetery beyond which Polish and
Lithuanian families lived. He knocked on the door of the first house.
A peasant opened the door. In his hand he held a lamp
With a Star of David, which he looted from a Jewish home.
‘Let me in, please’, the boy implored. The man raised the lamp
And looked at the blood covered naked body of the boy.
‘Jew, go back to the grave that you came from! ’ he said
And he shut the door in his face.
Zvi Michalowski knocked on many doors on that night
But nobody wanted to take him in. In his wanderings he arrived
In a wooded area. He knew the old widow who lived in the house
And knocked on the door. She was shocked to see the boy.
She held a burning piece of wood in her hand and spurned him.
He stood there nevertheless. She cursed him, sending him away
With angry words. When he did not move she threatened him
With the fiery wood she had in her hand.
But the boy refused to go away. ‘I am your Lord, Jesus Christ,
Who came down from the cross’, he told her. ‘Now look at me,
Look at the blood of my body, the pain the suffering of the innocent.
Please, let me in’.
Shaking all over, the old woman began to pray.
She fell on her knees at the bloodstained feet of the boy.
Then she slowly rose to her feet, opened the door and let him in.
‘Oh, my dear God, oh my dear God, oh my dear God’,
She kept repeating her prayer, crossing herself each time.
The boy asked the woman not to tell anyone about his visit.
She asked him to bless her family and her, which he promptly did.
She gave him food and clothes and prepared for him a warm bath.
He stayed in her house for three days and three nights.
When Zvi Michalowski left the house he was dressed as a farmer
And carried a food supply for a week. Soon he reached
The nearby forest and went into hiding. He survived the war
Fighting the Nazis as a partisan.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Whose Life is Worth More?
'Whose life is worth more? ' the SS officer asked.
Jacob Kogen did not answer.
In the eerie silence that ensued
the SS man drew his pistol.
'Tell me', he said, playing with the weapon,
'Whose life is worth more?
Yours? Your wife's? Your children's,
or the life of a stranger? '
'All human lives are equal', Kogen replied.
'You mean the life of a Jew and a non-Jew
has the same value? ' the SS officer asked.
'God created all human beings
equally entitled to their lives', Kogen said.
'In that case you will provide me 7,000 Jews',
the SS man said.
It was September 1,1942,
the third anniversary of the war's start,
the German attack on Poland
and Kogen was a member of the Jewish Council
in a Polish town.
He went home devastated.
He realized that The Nazis would take
the selected 7,000 people
outside the town in order to be shot.
'One shall not shed innocent blood
to save his own life', he told his wife.
And he added: 'A Jew Cannot decide
who will be taken for execution'.
Kogen and his family committed suicide.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Little-Known Death Factory
Operation Barbarossa,
The German invasion of the Soviet Union
commenced on June 22,1941.
Behind the rapidly advancing Wehrmacht forces
mobile SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen,
went into action. They killed Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war and political commissars.
The historian Raul Hilberg estimated
the number of Jewish men, women and children
murdered by the Einsatzgruppen
in the ravines of Babi Yar, in the forests of Riga
and many other places at 1.3 million.
On the outspread yards of a former kolkhoz,
a dusty Soviet collective farm,
the SS task forces set up a secret death factory.
Its horrible assembly lines creaked and cried
in the outskirts of Minsk of Byelorussia,
near the village of Maly Trostenets.
Here the Nazis murdered thousands of Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, Gypsies
and other Byelorussian civilians.
And then, on May 19,1942,
the first transport of Jews from Germany,
Austria and Czechoslovakia arrived.
Maly Trostenets became
a Vernichtungslager, an extermination camp.
Men, women and children
Were shot daily in the forests.
Others, thousands of them,
were killed in mobile gas chamber vans,
on the way from Minsk to Maly Trostenets.
Special groups of prisoners threw the corpses
Of the murdered into deep pits of mass graves.
The 'final solution',
the euphemistic code used in Hitler's Reich
for the extermination of the Jews,
was conducted in great secrecy.
The guards were ordered under oath
to shut their mouth.
The perpetrators of the massacres tried
to obliterate the evidence
that the camp ever existed.
As the Red Army advanced
the inmates were forced to exhume the bodies
from the mass graves and to cremate the corpses.
After they completed their terrible task
the guards killed them as well.
Finally, on June 28,1944,
the SS guards blew up the camp.
One of the victims who was shot by the Nazis
at Maly Trostenets was Vincent Hadleuski,
a Catholic priest and Byelorussian patriot.
Another victim who died here was Cora Berliner,
a German Jewess born in 1942 in Hannover,
She was known in her homeland
as a pioneer of social work and as an economist.
The Austrian-born soprano Grete Forst
was murdered in Maly Trostenets, too.
History has recorded the date: June 1,1942.
The psychologist Margarete Hilferding,
her compatriot, also lost her life here,
on September 23 of the same year.
No survivors of the lager are known
to be alive today.
Since the Nazis did not keep camp records
the exact number of people who perished here
in the genocide is unknown.
Estimates range from 200,000
to half million murdered men, women
and children. At least 65,000 of them
were Jews.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Holocaust Latvia Begins
Holocaust Latvia begins
on June 22,1941 when
the German army invaded
the Russian Soviet Union;
and the Baltic States
of Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia which had
by Soviet military forces;
recently been occupied
after a proud period
of independence after
World War One finished.
Murders of Jews
Communists began
almost immediately
by Einsatzgruppen;
perpetrated by German
killer squads known
as Special Task Groups
Special Assignment Groups;
the German Security Police
Sicherheitspolizei or Sipo
the Security Service of the SS
the Sicherheitsdienst or SD.
The first recorded murders
were on the day after invasion
on the night of June 23,1941
in town of Grobina near Liepāja;
six Jews were killed
in the church cemetery
by Sonderkommando
1a members deployed;
with the 14th Army
Nazi German
Einsatzkommandos
were a sub-group;
of five Einsatzgruppen
mobile killing squads
up to 3,000 men each
composed of 500 to 1000;
officials of dread SS
Schutzstaffel (SS)
and Gestapo thugs
their vile missions;
the annihilation of Jews
Gypsies Soviet political
Commissars to kill Jews
all Polish intellectuals;
Romani, communists
NKVD collaborators
in captured territories
behind the advancing;
German front lines
Nazi occupiers
were also aided
by a unit of native;
Latvians known
as Arājs Commando
Latvian auxiliary police
Wehrmacht commanders;
bolstered the strength
of the Einsatzgruppen
with regular-army troops
whenever required.
Latvia July 29,1941
forty mental patients
from Lódz in Poland
are taken from hospital;
executed in nearby forest
July 31,1941 Hermann
Göring instructs SS Reich
Security Service chief;
Reinhard Heydrich
to evacuate eliminate
all European Jews
in German-held territory;
Göring's letter mentions
'complete solution'
to European Jewry
Jews purified in death;
July 1941 Germans
establish a Jewish
ghetto at Dvinsk Latvia
July-August 1941;
Jews are murdered
by the tens of thousands
throughout western
Soviet Union Lithuania;
Romania and Latvia
who are the murders?
German Einsatzgruppen
Romanian troops militia;
Ukrainian peasants
Lithuanian civilians
August 1941 German
slaughter of Jews;
at Cesis Latvia
is celebrated
by German troops
security police;
celebrate with
a Totenmahl
'death banquet'
August 1941;
in Belgium
collaborationist
military
organization;
Legion Wallonie
Wallonian Legion
is established
September 29-30 1941;
Babi Yar Kiev
Soviet Ukraine
33,771 Jews
killed in two days;
by SS and German
police units
November 30 and
December 8 1941;
at Rumbula forest
near Riga Latvia
25,000 Jews
killed in two days;
Einsatzgruppen
will murder
over one million
people in occupied;
territories the first
Nazi organized
policy mass killing
of European Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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The Holocaust committed by the Nazis turned this country, where most of the European Jews used to live and where their culture used to flourish, into a massive grave. This is why initiatives to revive Jewish culture in Poland is so important.
quote by Marek Belka
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Krystallnacht 1938
I fear the sound of booted feet.
They inspire painful memories
though fragmented and incomplete
I can recall so vividly
The sound of breaking glass and boots.
I was too young to understand
the screaming jeers and gleeful hoots.
As storm troopers took full command
and attacked Jewish properties.
Without restraint from anyone
protestors beaten to their knees.
All semblance of the law had gone.
November nineteen thirty eight
The Nazis had proscribed the Jews
the ninth a night of spite and hate.
Who lost all that they had to lose..
My parents sent me to the States
a privilege for which they had to pay
with everything they had. It grates
upon me still that I survived.
because of their self sacrifice.
The guilt I feel still eats away
because they paid the final price.
I know I am alive today.
Because some cousins took me in
and raised me as American.
Although I was but distant kin
Though I would rather not, I can
recall that night so long ago.
The cries of men in agony
how much is true I do not know.
In dreams I see so vividly
The dreadful scenes I did not see
deeply etched in memory.
A turning point in history.
affecting my whole world and me.
I was a child of only eight
The Nazis killed my family
Though I was saved I had to wait
Til we defeated Germany.
To know for certain they were dead
along with many millions more.
The sound of boots fills me with dread.
I’m glad I can’t remember more.
Now I have children of my own
a fit old man of seventy.
I wonder If I could have shown
their courage which would send me free.
To strangers in a far off land
where they decided I would be
safer. I think I can understand
their only thought was to save me.
I wonder where it all began
I see no reason for it still.
Mans inhumanity to man
and don’t suppose I ever will.
30-Nov-08
http: // blog.myspace.com/poeticpiers
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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In 1933, the Nazis came to power and the more systematic persecution of the Jews followed quickly. Laws were enacted which excluded Jewish children from higher education in public schools.
quote by Jack Steinberger
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Ode To Irena Sendler
Her photo stares at me dreamy and melancholic
Like golden October leaves against a cloudy sky.
She bends gently her oval head towards her right shoulder
That carries the anguished burden of the world.
The parted dark hair in the center is combed back
Into a bun adorning a charming face.
And she looks with tender caring eyes,
A countenance more enigmatic than of the Mona Lisa.
Irena Sendler, née Krzyzanowska,
Polish Catholic social worker with a loving heart,
A gracious woman of valor and compassion
A brave humanitarian and Righteous of the Nations,
The rescuer of children from the Warsaw Ghetto
I bow my head and salute you.
What was the source of your towering magnanimity?
Where did you find the moral strength for what you did?
She was born in 1910 in Otwock,25 km southeast
Of Warsaw. Her father was a physician with Socialist
Leanings. In the 1930s she was a student at the University
Of Warsaw and was expelled for three years because
She protested that Jewish students had to sit
On segregated benches in the lecture halls.
In 1939 the Nazis occupied Poland and Irena served
In the Armia Krajowa, the Polish Home Army
Under the cover name Jolanta. She also joined
the Zegota resistance organization that aided the Jews.
Her role included producing false documents that helped
Thousands of Jewish families to flee from the Nazis.
As an employee of the Social Welfare Department
Irena could enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs
Of typhus. Inside the ghetto she wore the yellow Star
Of David for solidarity with the Jews. And when she
Returned to the Aryan side of the city she smuggled out
Babies and toddlers in ambulances and trams or through
The sewers.
One baby was taken out in a mechanic's tool box.
In the ambulance next to the driver
A specially trained dog would bark to veil
Any cries of the infants hidden beneath the stretchers.
The rescued children then had been handed to the care
Of priests and nuns who would help to find shelters
In convents, or in the homes of friendly families.
During the war Irena saved the lives
Of 2,500 Jewish children.
It was a dangerous mission
And she risked torture and death. One day
In late October of 1943 the Gestapo arrested Irena.
They brutally tortured her and broke her legs and feet.
But she refused to betray her network of helpers.
Then the Nazis sentenced her to death.
Eventually, on the way to the execution site
Zegota saved Irena by bribing a German guard
Who let her go. Her name was placed on the list
Of the executed.
Irena went into hiding. And when she recovered
From her injuries she continued the rescuing missions.
She registered the name and personal information
Of every child that she saved. She placed their real
Identity records in jars, which she buried
Under an apple tree in a neighbor's backyard.
When the war was over Irena unearthed the jars.
Soon the arduous search to find the parents began.
However, only a few of the children whom she rescued
From the monstrous jaws of the Nazis could be reunited
With their families because almost all the Jews of Poland,
Three million of them, perished in the Holocaust.
Irena Krzyzanowska Sendler received many honors
for her humanitarian efforts and heroic rescue operations.
Yad Vashem in Israel conferred on her the title
Righteous among the Nations. Pope John Paul II
Wrote her a personal letter thanking her for what she did.
Poland decorated her with the Order of the White Eagle
And the Jan Karski organization awarded her
With the medal of Courage and Heart.
She died in 2008, aged 98.
A noble woman with a lofty soul,
Irena did not help people for material gains, for gold
Or diamonds. Nor did she risk her life for fame.
She rescued children from the ghetto
Because of her love of humanity
And because of her belief in the sacredness of life.
She did not see herself as a hero.
The term actually irritated her.
She tormented herself and had qualms
Of conscience that she did not do enough;
That she could have done more.
It was a regret that would follow her to her death.
In a letter addressed to the Polish Parliament she wrote:
Every child saved with my help is the justification
Of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.
poem by Paul Hartal
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They Called Him Meyer July
They called him Mayer and July,
in Poland, though July became
for him quite obsolete, this name
changed into Kirschenblatt. Here’s why
we ought still to remember Mayer.
As Kirschenblatt, and born in Apt,
the place which in old age he mapped
with an artistic, frenzied fire,
he used to paint each street where he
grew up, before Apt was destroyed
by Nazis. It is not a void
today since he made sure we’d see
the place as it existed still
within his mind. More than Chagall,
he made sure it would not be null.
On paper, paint he used to spill
brought life back to the Jews we see
as if alive while in the mind
of those who have not left behind,
as he did not, their memory.
Jeffrey Shandler writes an obituary of Mayer Kirschenblatt who started painting scenes of his childhood home on his 50th wedding anniversary, at the age of 73 and lived in Canada since 1934. He recently died at the age of 93 not long after an exhibition of his art at the Jewish art, preserved in a book published in 2007, “They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust”.
12/8/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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The Holocaust
In a cold and silent world, weeping people wait,
Hoping and praying to not face this solemn fate.
But even thought they were quiet, as quite as they could be,
They were still found in the dark ghettos, the whole Jewish family.
The cries from the little ones so confused and so afraid,
Were ignored by the wretched Nazis, who caused heartbreak in that day.
They led them on a tearful trail toward to dreaded Auschwitz place.
And treated them like guinea pigs. testing them face to face.
Not to care in the world did the Nazi leaders possess,
Toward the unfair treatment to which placed the Jews in distress.
And all these fears and terrors led up to this fatal loss,
Of all the millions of innocent Jews killed in the Holocaust.
poem by Brenda Kodesh
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The Jews are the most tenacious people in history. Hebron is there to prove it. It ties 20 miles south of Jerusalem, 3,000 feet up in the Judaean hills. There, in the Cave of Machpelah, are the Tombs of the Patriarchs. According to ancient tradition, one sepulcher, itself of great antiquity, contains the mortal remains of Abraham, founder of the Jewish religion and ancestor of the Jewish race. Paired with his tomb is that of his wife Sarah. Within the building are the twin tombs of his son Isaac and his wife Rebecca. Across the inner courtyard is another pair of tombs, of Abraham's grandson Jacob and his wife Leah. Just outside the building is the tomb of their son Joseph. This is where the 4,000-year history of the Jews, in so far as it can be anchored in time and place, began.
Paul Johnson in A History of the Jews, Chapter One: Israelites (1987)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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What Is A Jewish Poem?
WHAT IS A JEWISH POEM?
What is a Jewish poem?
‘Shema’ is a Jewish poem
Perhaps the Jewish poem-
'Shmoneh Esreh' is comprised of Jewish poems
Nineteen prayers as one-
Our history is filled with Jewish poems-
From the beginning with Abraham and Sarah
Those who have given so much beyond our understanding -
Jewish poems everywhere -
Is each Jewish life a poem and a story also?
Or is it only those who give something to our people and history
Who are worthy of Poetry?
I have known many Jewish poems
People the great world will not know the names of
People who whether they walked humbly or not
Made the lives of others better in some way –
Kindness is perhaps the ultimate Jewish poem
And Justice also-
And Jewish poems are not without their contradictions –
As I write this poem in Jerusalem in the land of Israel
I think of the small Jewish world of Troy New York where I came from so many years ago
And miss so many people no longer of that and this world –
Longing for Israel for two thousand years was the Jewish poem
Living here now is a blessing and a gift
I thank God for.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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As long as Nazi violence was unleashed only, or mainly, against the Jews, the rest of the world looked on passively and even treaties and agreements were made with the patently criminal government of the Third Reich.... The doors of Palestine were closed to Jewish immigrants, and no country could be found that would admit those forsaken people. They were left to perish like their brothers and sisters in the occupied countries. We shall never forget the heroic efforts of the small countries, of the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Swiss nations, and of individuals in the occupied part of Europe who did all in their power to protect Jewish lives.
quote by Albert Einstein
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Nazi Death Squads Enter Eastern Europe
Einsatzgruppen ultimate genocide killing machines
plans so heinous Satan glorified as his SS hells legions;
task forces sowed vile atrocious monstrous Nazi deeds
SS paramilitary death squads systematic mass killings;
originally killing by indifferent civilian herd shootings
typically seek primary target Jews Gypsies Communists;
political categories Polish intellectuals Soviet prisoners
early prey physically mentally handicapped homosexuals;
rabid intolerance eradicated Nazi perceived imperfections
great musical voices minds selected for mass executions;
Einsteins Stephan Hawkings earth rare intolerated genius
unique human diversity frog marched to foul gas chambers;
Einsatzgruppen operated throughout invasion territories
occupied by German armed forces following invasions;
like Poland and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Einsatzgruppen systematically carried out evil operations;
ranging from repellent murder of individuals to operations
which lasted over two or more days vast horrific massacres;
at Babi Yar Kiev Soviet Ukraine 33,771 killed in two days
at Rumbula forest near Riga Latvia 25,000 killed in two days;
who testifies 33,771 Kiev Jews were massacred in two days
at Babi Yar official reports by Einsatzgruppe to headquarters;
infamous September 29-30 1941 SS and German police units
auxiliaries under awful guidance of Einsatzgruppe members;
(mobile killing unit) C slaughtered their naked Jewish victims
as quarry marched into a ravine Einsatzgruppe detachments;
shot all women children elderly without mercy in small groups
in subsequent months following the massacre German authorities;
stationed at Kiev rounded up killed thousands more Jews
at Babi Yar and non-Jews including Roma (Gypsies):
executed too were Soviet prisoners of war Communists
100,000 people estimated murdered at Babi Yar massacres;
Latvia during first six months of Nazi occupation Germans
local collaborators slaughtered 90 percent of the 95,000 Jews;
July 1941 invasion 40,000 Jews live in Riga in fear first days
of occupation savage attacks are launched upon Riga's Jews;
racist pogrom arresting beating torturing raping Riga Jews
Latvian 'civilian' nationalists begin burning synagogues;
with families inside thousands are driven toward beaches
nearby woods shot murdered a surviving 32,000 victims;
are forced into 2 separate overcrowded slave labour ghettos
males 16 to 60 are selected war effort 'productive' workers;
Jewish women children old disabled people will be corpses
German abominable massacres indict humanity forever stains;
Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders
of over one million people in occupied territories;
Einsatzgruppen were the first Nazi organizations
to begin as organized policy mass killing of Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Peaked Cap; Skull-And-Crossbones Badge
stripped of citizenship rights
stripped of wealth all property
herded into walled off ghettos
denied medicines adequate food
forced to wear star badge of shame
thousands choose their own death
by suicide as starvation disease cull
shipped to Nazi concentration camps
shipped in tightly closed cattle wagons
shipped without food water for terror days
old sick weak die during locked in journeys
upon arrival selected forced labour or gassings
when your thin enough limbs like fragile sticks
thrown into proud efficient ovens to burn bones
Mercedes Benz;
caught in blizzard;
of monsters making;
a flurry of residue ash;
drifting fluttering down;
from overcast ashen sky;
sniffing charred wind;
flicking off ash flakes;
from spotless windshield;
a trim double-breasted suit;
for this top ranking Nazi official;
a fine young; decorated SS officer;
walks brazenly; beside party official;
SS uniform; tailored to poster fear;
project respect;
for absolute authority;
people fall ill at sight;
peaked stylish cap;
skull-and -crossbones badge;
Death’s Head collar patch;
Waffen-SS uniform field-grey;
a fine uniform;
produced by Hugo Boss;
dignitaries to inspect;
production of Waffen-SS;
uniforms produced;
under forced labour conditions;
in concentration camps;
midsummer storm human ash
incinerated remains of murdered
used up slaves Jews undesirables
gassed burned in Hitler’s death camps
in patented J. A. Topf & Soehe ovens
name proudly handsomely emblazoned
with the name Topf in Gothic brass letters
Nazi Topf family ovens
used to incinerate millions
leaving almost no evidence
Aushwitz Buchenwald Dachau
a proud family heritage
we “designed and built dozens
of crematoriums for the Nazis”
when a tyrant regime slaughters
innocent women children in the streets
rounds them up in the night ships
them off in cattle wagons to genocide camps
brands their flesh murders millions
in slave starved exterminations experiments
it is time for a moral; civilized world; to take action;
but the allies; will hide shocking facts; from the public;
deny knowledge; you must understand; those trains;
resources; could be carrying munitions; weapons of war;
taking troops to the front; costing allied lives; desperate;
Nazis will break out; at the Battle of Bulge; could win war.
The sad indictment of History remains;
the allies; could have stopped; the final
solution; but deliberately choose not to;
no Nuremburg Trial ever tried them; will
you? Who has authority to try such a case?
The decision by Topf & Soehne; to build
crematoria; for Auschwitz; enabled Nazi
industrialized; mass murder. Six million
Jews were murdered during the Holocaust;
a fifth; were killed at camps; at Auschwitz.
Least We Forget
along with
homosexuals,
Gypsies,
Polish
political
prisoners,
Soviet
prisoners
of war.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx.
quote by Arthur Hertzberg
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Legumes
Sephardic Jews,
Ashkenazi Jews,
Legumes;
Of this Common Era to expose my love to you,
But the 'Jewish Book of Why' is all that you have.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Genesis Of Genocide
GENESIS OF GENOCIDE
Jewish history comes with homily,
the seder shared by all the family
the best example. When men talk about
the Holocaust the homilies they're taught
homogenize the fate that menaced us
the Jews, with that of gentiles. Genesis
of genocide is changed: the hermeneutic
of revision makes it therapeutic
for those who wish to drive Jews from their land.
"The Jews, " they say, "have like the Nazis sinned,
creating victims just as Nazis did,
replacing Hitler with the settlers' God, "
revisionists exclaiming "Out of order! "
when hearing at the end of every seder
the mantra, "Next year in Jerusalem! "
while they as chauvinists condemn
the Jews, in spite of their thousand years
of blood and sweat and toil, and lots of tears,
as then in Jewish wounds rub salt, declaring
that there were other holocausts, comparing
other genocidal horrors to
what happened to the Jews, a point of view
that totally distorts significance of what,
in Wannsee, Hitler's minions chose to plot,
reducing the Solution that was Final
to a competition's quarterfinal.
The greatest homily of Jewish history
is Jews' survival, a great mystery
which it's impossible to overhype,
based on the theme of their great anthem, hope.
The last part of this poem was inspired by an emotional outburst that I had after Gerald Duchovnay told Linda, Florence Zhou and me about how he teaches students in Texas about the Holocaust by using the Shoah to explain to them "the holocaust in Sudan."
Ed Rothstein ("Memories of Holocaust, Fortified, " NYT,4/22/11) writes from Skokie:
Before the $45 million Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center opened here two years ago, there was some urgency in completing its 65,000-square-foot building, which now stands so incongruously monumental in the midst of Chicago's suburban landscape. At one time,7,000 Jews bearing the scars of the Holocaust had lived in Skokie with their families, and they were aging. Many had contributed artifacts to the museum; some participated when it was just a storefront on Main Street; some had their oral histories recorded for its exhibition and their lives chronicled in the institution's imposing companion book, "Memory and Legacy."…..
If we want to find a lesson in the events, for example, is it that individuals should not be bystanders or that nations should not be appeasers? Is the lesson that everybody should have a social conscience, or that a different kind of political action is needed when such forces emerge? Was the Holocaust a product of intolerance or an expression of more specific archetypal hatreds?
One of the challenges faced by Holocaust museums as survivors die is to understand their experience by seeing it through more than their eyes, to examine the past without homogenizing it with platitudes, to offer history without homily.
This poem echoes one that I wrote on 2/17/09, inspired by a statement by the Lubavitcher Rebbe:
TOMORROW MORNING, EARLY
"Will there be another holocaust? "
they asked the Rebbe of Lubavitch.
For an answer he was never lost.
"Of course there will be. Man is savage."
"When will this happen? " they inquired.
"Morgen in der frih, " he said,
Tomorrow morning, early, has transpired,
and millions are already dead.
It's happened in Rwanda and Sudan,
as in silence we looked on.
It couldn't happen here, we say. It can,
and millions more will soon be gone.
Long ago an interviewer asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, if he believed the Holocaust could ever happen in America. "Morgen in der frih, " was his reply, Yiddish words that mean: "Early tomorrow morning."
11/6/12 #11803
poem by Gershon Hepner
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We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.
They Fought with their Bare Hands
To Mordecai Anielewicz (1919-1943)
Facing formidable forces,
Supported with tanks and artillery,
You knew that there was no way to win.
Nevertheless, you decided to fight,
Not for victory, but for Jewish honour.
So, one day in the spring of 1943,
You were 24 years old then,
The Zionist banner was hoisted
Over the Warsaw Ghetto wall,
Along with the Polish flag.
The SS troops preferred to use
Artillery fire, flamethrowers
And gas, or to blast the houses
By dynamite squads, rather than engage
In direct street fighting with untrained
And poorly armed young Jewish men
And women.
And soon the whole ghetto was aflame.
The news about the uprising spread in the world.
Broadcasts by the Underground Polish radio SWIT
Operating out of Warsaw were picked up,
As far as Sweden. The radio said that women
And children are defending themselves
With their bare hands.
The uprising galvanized resistance movements
Throughout Nazi occupied Europe. It was on May 8,
After three weeks of Combat, that you threw
Your last grenade from the bunker on 19 Mila Street
And fell together with your beloved bride Mira.
But, as you said, you realized your dream,
Because you had lived to see Jewish resistance
In its heroic greatness and resplendent glory.
You had stood up to the brutal Nazi empire
Of Adolf Hitler.
In spite of all his Military might,
The Fuehrer failed to drag you away to
Treblinka and you died as a free human being.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Transformed Jewish submission to resistance.
You helped to turn hopelessness to resolve,
Despair to vigour, degradation to courage.
You formed Dignity out of humiliation,
Sculpted from misery the grit of honour.
Like the North Star showing steadfast direction
To Desperate sailors, the light of your heroic command
Shines through the darkness of the Night.
Your young life sacrificed on the cruel altar
Of History is a luminous monument
To soulful conscience, a lofty triumph
Of the human spirit.
From your spilled blood that sunk into the earth
Of Poland, poignant sprouts of bravery and dignity
Blossom forth, flowers of freedom and buds of hope
Bear blooms of sacred petals.
poem by Paul Hartal
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