Bxgell2
Perfection
Member since 5/05 16438 total posts
Name:
Beth
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A beautiful poem
Written by my MIL about her experiences during the holocaust - she was passed off to a christain family when she was very young and eventually ended up in Israel, as an orphan and grew up in a boarding school without any family. It sounds a little weird because of the translation. She was asked to speak to a group in Germany and this is her speech:
Spring in Bleznek
Dad smuggled me out of the ghetto to a family of Poles and during his visits on cold dark nights always repeated “your name is Elza *****, you are Jewish and you can’t tell a soul.”
What memories does a Jewish girl who was borne in 1938 Levov carry – images and circumstances, memories of sounds and smells, its all fractured and there is no one to explain. It’s a puzzle with many missing parts, there are no pictures or stories of how I laughed, how I cried, when did I start walking, what were my first words, who I loved and more.
I learned how many pieces are missing while raising my own sons, and even more while watching my grandchildren.
The symbol of Aliyat Hanoar, the body that picked me up and saved me and many like me after the war, depicts a tree stump and from this stump a small offshoot is springing. My fragile life was suddenly stumped while leaving the house on the way to the ghetto - the house was taken, my whole family was taken, so was my father, the love was taken, the civil environment and any intellectual reasoning.;
Only Dad’s hope remained, that an offshoot will survive.
The first time that we felt like human beings fit to live since the war broke was in Bleznek.
Things had meanings, we lived in a real house, we slept in sheets covering beds, ate wonderful foods, we learned to read and write, parties and holidays were celebrated, music and dance, and we were familiarized with a strange concept – the enjoyment for Joy, sailing on the Alba river, hiking and feasting on berries and even getting presents.
Then we were sent to Israel under our new names which we had to memorize on the boat ride. Our new names were only a means to get there; they did not erase our identities.
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I didn't include the end because she talks directly to the group and wouldn't make sense here, but I thought the first part was beautiful, and touching, all the same...
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