This poem was translated by Jacob Sloan.
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My Countryman, Sidney Hauser,
1920 Harrison Avenue,
Bronx 55, N. Y.
Writes me a letter:
A postal came from Komarno,
From our home;
Censored by the Soviets.
The writing is dated the 27th,
September 1945.
But the writer, a former neighbor,
A peasant, an old gentleman;
One of the better ones—
Writes openly and to the point.
On the 24th of October, 1942
One lone machine gun slaughtered
430 Jewish males of Komarno;
And they are buried on Karachufka Hill.
In that grave (writes Sidney Hauser),
Lies my younger brother, Monish.
Again, in the month of November, 1942,
The women and children were taken
From their homes, saturated with naphtha
And put to fire.
Oh, Lord! This was a burning
The women ran with hair unloosened,
The children flaming torches.
They wanted to run to the lake, to the
water.
They wanted but fell—like scorched lambs.
And in that hell (writes Sidney Hauser)
My eldest sister, Miriam
And her two children were burned.
It is well my father and mother
Died before the slaughter.
A natural death,
Thank God, from spot typhus.
“Yes,” writes the good peasant,
“To my great Christian shame
I must confess—the truth:
We, the neighbors, Ukraines, Poles,
Helped the Germans in their labor—
To kill, to slaughter all, all the Jews . . . . ”
Even in the Jewish cemetery
Tombstones were uprooted—
They levelled the sacred ground.
Summertime they plow and plant,
The grass is green and smells sweet.
The swine of town come and go—
They feast and gorge themselves.
I don’t want to forget
To thank—
The peasant, the old gentleman
Who sent a living greeting
From my dead town, Komarno.
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