................................................................................................
The Poetry Of...
Deborah Rey...............................................................
Auschwitz Insomnia
My mother was not gassed.
Much easier to accept, isn't it?
Oops, I forgot:
for those who do not know,
we're talking 'bout
those camps of yore,
of 1940 - '46.
No, not the summer camps,
the other ones,
the ones of many stars.
When she got into the camp,
the chambers had been broken down
to hide all shame.
Chambers filled with gas, I talk about.
Those lovely showers,
don't you remember?
Or, don't you know?
You didn't know?
Well, they were there and
people took a shower and
instead of water there was gas
and that was all.
But, anyhow, my mother did not
have to take a shower.
She, a musician, played the violin.
So, probably,
they let her live until
they got sick of music, too.
They most likely shot her in the head ... Poof!
Or, maybe, she died of some sick sickness.
Who cares?
She died, that's all.
Enough filling in?
Or, do you want the pestilence,
the diarrhoea, the pain of
famine in more detail?
And some people cannot sleep,
because they miss their mother.
But, who the hell cares?
She died and I,
I miss her every,
each and every
night, and
cannot sleep.
**
They never asked
They never asked
if I was scared, or traumatized,
they never asked.
They never asked
how, through my child's eyes,
I saw the brutal, dangerous
Nazi occupation,
they never asked.
They never asked
what went through me
when, with my child's eyes,
I saw a German soldier,
laughing,
take a baby by its feet
and smash its little head
against the wall.
They never asked
how it felt to see
my father cry. An actor,
forced into hiding underground,
or be deported, because
he would not go on stage
for them and resisted.
They never asked
if I was scared to die
when they never asked,
but told me,
to take over from him
and resist.
They never asked
how come I knew
the difference between
what was good and bad,
right and wrong,
resisting, or collaborating,
they never asked.
Nobody ever asked
if I felt any hatred
for those who, not to survive,
but often cowardly,
or out of sheer fanaticism,
collaborated and proudly
stood by and watched
those who refused to yield
be shot, deported, or -quite
and ugly sight -
starve in the street,
they never asked.
Not many ask
what I have done
with those disgraceful pigs.
I killed a few, denounced a few
and, after the war, spat on a few
and do not ask of me today
to shake the hand of one of them,
please, never ask.
They never asked
why I did what I have done
they never asked.
You do not ask
but I will tell you why.
I stole and cheated, I killed
and betrayed, because it was
- if you were to ask me now -
the only way to stop
the madness that was raging
in the world. For some it was
an ill-founded righteous cause
to fight the Nazis, collaboration
no disgrace, but
if you asked me, while
they never asked,
I had an inbred knowledge
of what was right, or wrong,
an instinct sharpened into
wordless comprehension
of what had to be done
to save as many lives
as possible, no matter how.
They never asked
me to be a hero
and if you asked me
now, I never was
and never
asked to be.
I do, though, often ask
myself,
why they never asked
if I wanted to be
born.
**
It was not because....
It was not,
because they had a religion.
It was not,
because they believed
in anything but life.
Oh, G-d.
No, she did not believe
in G-d.
So many of them didn't.
It was just, because they were,
we are unclean,
because they belonged,
we belong to
the wrong Race.
A race that should be
destroyed,
erased from the face of the
earth,
no longer exist.
Oh G-d.
Even today,
afraid to pronounce the word,
people talk about them,
about me,
as "people of the Jewish Faith",
and yet,
I am a Jew
and so were they,
just Jews with,
or without a Faith.
Oh G-d.
At the time, Adolf made it
quite clear:
religion had nothing
to do with it,
still has nothing
to do with it;
it's the race that counted,
counts.
The birth of a State
killed a nation,
politics and religion
turned my Jewish brothers
and my Arab cousins
into ruthless murderers,
and made me turn away
in total impotence.
I don't believe in their beliefs of:
Stay, stay, stay,
or rather:
Out, out, out.
(As so many would prefer
to see.)
Oh, G-d,
tell me...
why the Hell
should
would
could I
ever
believe
in You?
Please, tell me
Please, tell me how
to write about it
without tears.
Please, tell me how
to live it
without pain.
Please, tell me how
to depersonalize my past,
shut up
have hope
believe again and
accept sentences and
words depicting
peace and rebirth.
In a huge pit
in one of those camps,
which people heard
enough about
it seems,
my Mother's bones
were doused with lye,
made un-rebirthable.
I know, you do not
want it "face on",
you've had enough
such gory details,
but....
Please, tell me how
to barricade my soul
and speak no more
about it,
but to myself.
Please, tell me how
to let the past be
just the past,
the present
just the present,
the dead the dead,
and say there was, and is
a reason for their deaths,
and see the grass that grows
on top of mass graves
as a sign of hope and peace.
Please, tell me how,
then maybe
I will sleep.
Child at War
You know
what you're doing,
when they tell you
to steal.
And though you're
still young,
you steal.
You know
what you're doing,
when they tell you
to lie.
And though
only a child,
you lie.
You know
what you're doing,
when they teach you
to kill.
It is war,
you're a child,
but you kill.
When you're
no longer small,
and the war
has been won,
you think
of the soldier
you killed.
Your excuse?
It was wartime,
but what of
his wife?
Are her wounds
still open,
like yours?
When you're
old and your soul,
still at war,
is in shreds,
you do
as once told,
you shut up.
Deborah served as a "baby-courier" in the Dutch Underground during
the Second World War. She was one of Holland's two Child Resistance
Fighters. Her poems appear in the 2006 UKAuthors Anthology~ 'Voices
from the Web 4'~ and you can read a wonderful profile of Deborah in
UKAuthors August 2006 Poet of the Month
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