Among the most poignant relics of the European catastrophe are the literary remains of the men and women who lived and died in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps: the poems and songs in which they express their sense of their situation. Not often on a high literary level, these poems have an immediacy of impact that goes beyond the borders of art.
Joseph Leftwich, who here presents and discusses a few examples of this literature of the doomed, is a well-known British Jewish journalist, historian, and litterateur; he has contributed innumerable articles to scholarly and general publications, and his books include Yisroel, What Will Happen to the Jews? and Along the Years, a volume of poetry.—ED.
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Reading the wealth of poetry that was composed in the death camps, the Yiddish poet A. Glanz-Leyeless asks, “How could these people write poetry? How could they think of rhythm, rhyme, meter?”
“These poems,” he writes, “force us to face the whole problem of the function of art, of poetry. Suffering, torture, death are rhythmic, metrical, and the desire of poetic expression is the conquest of death. The writing of poems and songs in the ghettos was a comfort and a consolation. The poets felt, even at the threshold of death, that their words would survive and would one day reach the world.” So, too, Ian Parsons, in the foreword to his anthology of modern English poetry, speaks of the effect of war upon poetry:. “When the future is foreshortened,” he says, “the value of existence is enhanced a thousandfold.”
Soon after the end of the war, in Sweden, I first heard the songs of the death camps and the ghettos actually sung by groups of those who had survived. I had read the songs before, in books and magazines, but here I heard them, as they had been heard and sung by so many people now dead. In a train approaching Stockholm, a group sang Gebirtig’s “It is burning, brothers, our poor little town is burning.” It was more than a song: it was a chant, a solemn humming, a muttering with bated breath. These people had seen their town burning. They knew what the song meant.
We are still too near the tragedy to judge or want to judge the poems strictly as poetry. Few of the writers were poets. Few had ever thought they would one day put their most intense thoughts and feelings into rhyme and rhythm. The poems are mostly simple, poignant verses, some of them straightforward narrative, stark descriptions of what had happened: “News Story,” as one of the poems is aptly entitled. “How It Started” is the title of another poem. And there is “The Funeral”:
Their coffin—the oven of the crematorium.
The face of the epoch stood sharp in the
air—
Like the smoke of the human hones
These lives were blown away on the wind
of history
(Die trune—der oivn fun der krematorie.
S’hot sharf durch die luftn gekukt die
epoke—
Azoi vie der roich fun die mentshliche
knochn,
Die lebns tseveite in vint fun historie.)
The quality of these poems is that of folk literature or folk ballad. Even the worst of them are not so bad as the average run of bad war poetry, for they were born out of experience. The writer of “The Funeral” himself perished in the oven of the crematorium which he had described as his coffin.
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I have mentioned Mordecai Gebirtig, who wrote “Our Poor Little Town Is Burning.” Gebirtig was a Yiddish folk poet who lived in Cracow. When the Germans came to Cracow they put him into the ghetto there, and in 1942 they shot him. A few days before he was shot, he wrote “In the Ghetto”:
Like the steps of footsore armies
Through sandy desert ways,
In the ghetto drag our sleepless nights,
And our weary days.The hours are heavier than lead.
The minutes filled with fear.
We fray the day should end,
And the night disappear.We do not sleep. We listen.
Dreadful thoughts pass through our head.
Whose lot will it he tonight,
Who tomorrow will be dead?We lie awake and shudder
At the sound of a creaking door
And the heart goes cold when a hungry
mouse
Scurries across the floor.So we lie awake all night and think,
Full of dread and fright.
Thus we pass our weary days
And our sleepless nights(Gleich vie die trit oif a zamdiken veg
Fun machnos farmaterte knecht
Tsien in ghetto zich undzere teg
Undzere shlofloze necht.Tsien die sho’en zich shverer vie blei,
Minuten ful mit aimo un shrek.
Bet men, der tog zol chotch zein farbei
Die nacht zol b’sholom avek.Shloft men nisht gor, nor men horcht un
men vacht,
Falt epes shrekleches ein.
Oif vemen vet falen der goirel die nacht
Zaiers a korben tsu zein . . . ?Ligt men azoi un die aimo iz grois
Herendik skripen a tir.
Tsitert dos harts, ven fun hunger a moiz
Grizhet a shtikel papir.Un azoi ligt men, in aimo un shrek,
Geyogt un derniderikt vie knecht
Un azoi tsien zich undzere teg
Undzere shlofloze necht.)
Not all waited passively till the Germans picked them out to be shot. There was Avraham Sutskever, now living in Israel, who helped to organize the work of the underground in the Vilna ghetto and later broke out of the ghetto to become a partisan leader. Among other achievements, he rescued large numbers of old manuscripts, books, paintings, and historical records from the Vilna libraries and museums. After the Germans captured Vilna, Sutskever and his partisans raided the Rom printing works—the most famous Hebrew publishing house in the world, which had been in uninterrupted operation in Vilna since 1789—and melted down the old Hebrew type for bullets. Sutskever wrote a poem about it:
Like groping fingers through gratings,
We reached out through the night
To take the plates of Rom’s printing press.
We dreamers must now become soldiers.
Melting words into bullets of lead,Those who saw in the ghetto
Jews with bullets and cannon balls,
Saw Jerusalem struggling,
Saw the fall of the granite walls.
And they grasped the sense of words molten
in lead.(Mir hoben vie finger gestirkte durch graten
Tzu fangen die lichtìge luft fun der frei,
Durch nacht sich getzoigen tzu nemen die
platten
Die bleiene platten fun Rom’s drukerei.
Mir, troimer, badarfen itst veren soldaten
Un shmeltsen oif koilen dem geist fun’em
blei.Un ver s’hot in ghetto gezen dos klai-zeien
Farklemt in heldishe yidishe hent—
Gezen hot er ranglen zich Yerusholayim
Dos falen fun yene granitene vent.
Farnumen die verter, farshmoltsen in bleien;
Un zaiere shtimen in hartsen derkent.)
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The songs sung in the ghettos and the camps were not only those that had been composed there. The prisoners found consolation also in singing the songs they carried in their memories, older songs by Bialik and Reisin, by Leivik and Itzik Manger. When Manger was in Poland in April 1948 at the unveiling of the Warsaw ghetto memorial, he was told on all sides how his songs had been sung in the camps and ghettos.
Of course the Jews were not altogether alone. They had fellow sufferers. They had friends and helpers. Glanz-Leyeless has a poem dedicated to the non-Jews in Poland who at the risk of their lives saved Jewish children from the Nazi murderers. A non-Jewish Polish poet, Vladislav Broniewski, wrote a poem about the rising in the Warsaw ghetto. The title is “To the Polish Jews,” and it is dedicated to Shmuel Ziegelbaum, the Jewish member of the Polish government-in-exile who committed suicide in London during the war because he felt that he, too, must die with those who were dying in Warsaw.
In Polish towns and villages the voice of
tumult is dumb.
There are no more fighters in the Warsaw
ghetto. They fell in fight.
Dumb is my word, drowned in blood, and
my heart is drowned in grief.
Polish Jews, there is a Polish poet with you,
in flight.You have hurled a stone at the gunners,
Who use their cannon to raze your homes
to the ground.
Sons of the Maccabees, you too can die
splendidly,
In a fight where no shadow of hope is found.
We must chisel this as on stone in our minds:
We are equal partners in sorrow and in the
blood we shed.
The execution ground unites us, and the
camps, Dachau and Oswiecim,
The nameless graves of our common dead.
These things are not new in Jewish history. Jewish literature is full of songs of lament over persecutions and mass slaughter. There is Jeremiah: “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people.” “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” The historian Leopold Zunz gives long selections from poems of lament written in the Middle Ages:
Swift as birds of prey they darted
On our helpless men and women.
Making martyrs of our people.
But they slew the body only,
And the soul escaped uninjured.
Some of the poets in the ghettos consciously connected their own experiences with those of earlier persecutions and pogroms. S. Shayevich, who was killed in the Lodz ghetto in 1942, refers in his own verse to Bialik’s “City of Slaughter,” a poem written in 1904, at the time of the Kishinev pogrom.
And in a lucky hour
Spring has come again.
Even the graves will deck themselves in
green.
Then rise, great poet,
Master of the City of Slaughter,
Come with me out of your green-crowned
grave.
Our ghetto will satisfy you.
Though we are mocked and degraded,
No man, not even the most pious,
Will run to the rabbi, as they did in your
time,
To ask if he may still live with his raped
wife.
Our ghetto will satisfy you,
Not like that other town
Which proclaimed fast days,
And gathered in the synagogues
“With weeping and loud cries,
With a flaming sea of tears.” . . .We go silently on our journey.
And more silently we die.
The bridegroom leaves his bride,
And the lover knows not where his bride lies
dead.
The child is brutally torn
From its mother’s arms.
And she is driven on at the point of a rifle,
With shouts of “Shoot her! Shoot!”
But forgive us, great wrathful poet,
That though we still have no fist,
And there is still no thunderbolt
To settle accounts for all generations,
And though you laughed bitterly
At our wasted victims and martyrs,
Yet you will bow three times to our ghetto
Jews,
And you will cry “Holy, holy, holy.”
God with gentle hand upon us too bestowed
a twin,
Death-decree and Spring.
The garden blooms, the sun shines,
And the slaughterer slaughters.
But we ask no reward from anyone.
For when a man is killed,
His God is killed also.
But listen, poet of wrath and vengeance,
Hear what I ask you.
Wake from their sleep
Mother Rachel,
And Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev,
And go, all three, to God.
You will thunder and demand.
Rachel will weep and plead.
And Levi Yitzhak will contend with God
And will say:
If you do nqt, Lord God,
Redeem living jews,
You will, alas, redeem dead bones.(Un in a mazeldike sho’
Az kein ein hore iz der frieling veiter do—
Kvorim afile velen zich in grins faihilen
To shtai oif dichter groiser,
Meister fun der “Schechite-shtot”—
Fun dein grin-bakointen kever farbet ich
dich
Fun undzer ghetto vestu shoin zein tsufriden,
Chotch mir zeinen do tsu shpot un shand
Vet kein man—der frumster afile—
Nisht loifen tsum rov a sheile fregen
“Tsie meg er mit zein isho veiter leben” . . . .
Fun undzer ghetto vestu shoin zein tsufriden,
Nisht vie dort in yene “shtot”
Vos hot goizer tanis geven
Un zich farzamelt in die shulen
“Mit vilde shreklech yeloles
Mit a brenendiken yam fun treren” . . . .Shtil shlept men zich oifen visten vander
Un noch shtiler gait men ois.
Un der chosen lozt iber zein kale farvaint
Un der gelibter vaist nisht fun zein kales
gebain.
Un dos kind vert fun mames hent
Mit retsiche aroisgerisen
Un s’yogt ir veiter die biks
Un vilde geshraien: “Shisen . . . shisen . . .”
Nor moichel zei undz groiser tsorendiker
dichter
Vos chotch kein foist hoben mir noch alts
nisht
Un s’hilcht noch alts nisht der groiser duner
Vos zol zich oprechenen far ale “doires”—
Un chotch du host azoi galik oisgelacht
Azelche umziste korbones un keidoishim—
Far die ghetto-yiden vestu zich drei mol
buken
Un mit hispalus brumen: “kodosh, kodosh,
kodosh”—
Got hot undz oich mit milder hant
Geshenkt a tsviling
A toiten-gairush mit a friling—
Der gorten blit, die zun leicht
Un der shoichet—shacht . . .
Nor mir foderen nisht bei kainem kein
loin,
Veil vert a mentsh geshochten—
Schacht men oich op zein Got . . .
Nor vaistu vos, dichter fun tsorn un
nekome,
Ich farlang fun dir?—
Ich farlang—vek oif fun zaier shlof
Die mame Rochel
Dem Berditchever tsaddik
Un ir zalbedrit gaits far Got—
Du vest duneren un foderen;
Rochel vet vainen un beten
Un Levi Yitzhak vet a din-toire halten
Un zogen zein mailits-yoisherdiken psak:
—Vestu nisht Reboinoi shel oilom
Oislaizen lebedike yiden—
Vestu oislaizen cholile toite sharbens . . .)
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Aaron Zeitlin, a Yiddish poet who happened to be on a visit to America when the war broke out and was therefore saved (his entire family was murdered, including his father, the great Yiddish and Hebrew writer Hillel Zeidin, and bis brother Elchanan Zeitlin), has written a poem, “A Dream after Maidanek.” Its theme is:
This too will be forgotten. This too.
My people has been burned to ashes,
And this too will he forgotten.
Hersh Glick, another of the Vilna ghetto poets, wrote “The Song of the Vilna Ghetto.”
This song is written not with ink but with
blood.
It is not the song of a free bird in the wood.
This song a people sang between collapsing
walls,
This song to future generations calls.So never say, this is the last road we have
gone,
This is the last time that the sun has shone.
The day will dawn, the sun will reappear.
Our tread will fall like thunder: “We are
here!”
(Dos lied geshriben iz rait blut un nit mit
blei,
S’iz nit kein liedl fun a foigel oif der frei,
Dos hot a folk tsvishen falendike vent
Dos lied gezungen mit naganes in di hent.To zog nit keinmol az du gaist dem letsten
veg,
Chotch himlen bleiene farshteln bloie teg.
Kumen vet noch undzer oisgebenkte sho’—
S’vet a poik ton undzer trot—mir zeinen do!)
There were children in the ghettos and the death camps, and they, too, wrote, these boys and girls of eight and ten and twelve.
From tomorrow I shall be sad,
From tomorrow on.
Not today. Today I will be glad.
And every day, no matter how bitter it may
be,
I shall say:
From tomorrow I shall be sad,
Not today.
Another child’s poem:
I sit with my dolls by the stove and dream.
I dream that my father came back,
I dream that my father is still alive.
How good it is to have a father.
I do not know where my father is.
And another:
I must be saving these days.
I have no money to save.
I must save health and strength.
I must save my nerves,
And the fire of my spirit.
I must be saving of the tears that flow.
I must save endurance these days.
There is so much I need in my life,
Warmth of feeling, and a kind heart.
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I have mentioned Glanz-Leyeless’s poem to the non-Jews in Poland who at the risk of their lives saved Jewish children by taking them into their homes and passing them off as their own sons and daughters. There is among the camp poems a cradle song based on this motif:
Sleep, my child, my little daughter.
Close your eyes and sleep.
You cannot know how I, your mother,
Think of you and weep.Somewhere far away, good people
Rear you as their own,
While I, your mother, sick and broken,
At my work-bench groan.A stranger sits beside your cradle,
Beneath her cottage thatch,
While I, your mother, slave of the Nazis,
Wear a yellow patch.God perhaps will hear my pleading,
And cut short my pain.
Then my ghost will seek my baby,
And find you again.Nobody will see me with you.
Only you, my dear,
Will feel the spirit of your mother
Standing very near.Sleep, my child, my little daughter.
Close your eyes and sleep.
You cannot know how I, your mother,
Think of you and weep.
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We ask ourselves how these people in the ghettos and the death camps could write poetry, how they could think of writing at all. One wonders also how their writings came to be preserved. But it must be remembered that the ghettos and camps were not small places, they were not prison buildings. They were towns. The Warsaw ghetto was a huge place, a large slice of the great capital city, with its own tramway system, its own police force, theaters, factories, schools. The Oswiecim death camp extended over more than twenty square miles, with ammunition factories, coal mines, farms, a railway station, stores, and barracks. The threat of death was continuous, but people had to live somehow and to try to satisfy all their needs, including those of the spirit. And so, in the shadow of death, there was still a kind of culture-cramped, distorted, but just as real as the culture of the outside world.
In the Warsaw ghetto the cultural leaders were Professor Meir Balaban, Dr. Isaac Schipper, and Dr. £manuel Ringelblum. All three were killed by the Germans, but while they lived they were tireless in their work. One survivor of the Warsaw ghetto reports: “Dr. Ringelblum commissioned me to produce a critical examination of Jewish literary work in Warsaw under the German occupation. I dealt with Katzenelson’s poems, a mystical play by Gilbert, poems by Yehiel Lerer, Israel Stern, and Joseph Kirman, a novel by Misha Skolov about the life of the people in the Warsaw ghetto, work by Kalman Lis and others. We did a lot of work like that, till the big transfer movement from July to September 1942, when thousands of Jews were deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka death camp, where they were killed. As soon as the deportations stopped, we resumed our cultural work.”
C. E. Montague has drawn an analogy from the fact that to supply a town with water from a well, the water must first be pumped to the top of a tower higher than any of the domestic cisterns which it is to fill: the mind of a tragic writer, he suggests, must be like that tower. There must be elevation, the writer must in a certain respect and for a certain time have lived with a rare and glowing intensity. This may be the reason why so much of the expression in Yiddish literature by those who went through the concentration camps and the ghettos is poetic in form. It gives the thrill of contact with vital and intense experience. If it is not yet literature, it is at least the raw material of literature. And it has today a power to move us that goes beyond its purely literary quality. Whatever our Jewish literature is to be in the future, it must take its start from these songs of the dead Jews of Europe, these songs of suffering from the years of the great ordeal when not only Europe’s Jews but Judaism and the Jewish spirit itself seemed to be facing utter extermination.
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