Sunday 19 June 2011

Two poems from Theresienstadt (Terezin concentration camp)

Roses
by  K.L Gross (Fall 1943)


The fragrance of roses is forever spoiled for me,
Since for me only misery does the word hold .
Where might my erstwhile companions be?
Starved, beaten and strangled: among death’s cold.

What happened to you, the one who was my world?
Who gave hope to make a tired heart brave,
Who seemed chosen as if by fate my way hurled?
I stand before all as though before a grave.

A grand purpose might be at work in everything,
Rolling the heavy waves of a new time,
Placing a great splendor in the offing.
I’m only human and feel my pain as a crime.

I would like to love but hate I must nonetheless.
The hate of the mother, who is robbed of her child.
I’m only human and can barely grasp the horridness;
We’ve been victims of more, beyond belief run wild.

I accuse everyone that lets it happen just the same,
Whoever watches calmly while trampled people cry.
I accuse everyone: “You are, all of you, to blame,
For having allowed your brother to suffer and die!”

And tell this to the righteous and the pious:
“You will all pay, one after the other!”
Hell will have to extirpate the malicious,
Before this people can be greeted as brother.

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Chorus of the Dead
by unknown poet

Against the night’s sky
Stands a fiery glow,
Grasping with searching arms
Deep into darkness below.
It is the torch of death,
It is the beacon of the dead!
How intensely the innocent fire
Smolders, a monument to the dead!

Here in the raging flue,
The victims are laid to rest.
Here at the evening mass,
An Amen is said in jest.
They believe that every deed
And its trace will vanish.
But from the glimmer and the light
There resounds strongly “Take heed!”

Do you hear the singing flames?
Do you hear the song of the embers
Springing from the glowing root
As from a seed without members?
Fire reduces embers to sparks
Rising in little clusters.
And I listen totally absorbed
By the courage a demonic chorus musters:

The earth will never forget us,
She remains our mother in all our pain.
Only blind, clueless fools imagine us
Beyond time and space with no domain.
We've arisen and are born anew,
New warriors with an old battle in view.

For we broke through the tight chain,
That held our life firmly fettered.
We became whole in mind and spirit,
From disease and decay untethered,
As a scab falls from a wound without pain.

Only through death is life reborn,
Through death the world is renewed.
We are the chosen first-born,
For whom existence has new meaning.
The earth will never forget us,
From us the world will be recast,
From the flames we are reborn,
Embers and fire brighten the night long past.


Translated by Mary Mills

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