Nein: NEVER Again

Never again never again NEVER AGAIN!

They shouted

The Jews that had survived the concentration

Camps,

The children of the refugees returning

(they had the good fortune to survive-

was it good sense though?)

Nein they said in German

‘Nein’ they said in Yiddish

No No No no no no NO NO NO

It must not happen again

We must never forget.

I knew a man

He came from Auschwitz

He was a good Polish Jewish boy.

He asked the rabbi

When he was just a tot

He wanted to know a lot

He wanted to know too much.

He asked the rabbi

“Rabbi,’ said Chaim,

‘Eef Adam und Eve wair

thee feerst people alife,

aand Cain thair soun

went aut to fuke his vife,

from vair deed Cainss vooman

coom anyvay? Can you please

tell me, rabbi’

The rabbi slapped him on the head

And told him he would tell him another time.

(He was smart that Chaim

He was smart.)

He grew up in ghetto Poland

And in the persecution of the Nazis

He was taken captive

And his wife and baby son were lost to him.

They were all put on the trains together

And they were huddled together

In cattle cars Chaim and his wife and his baby son

together with the others.

Then they came to a juncture,

A split in the track

And they stopped.

Chaim was holding his young boy

in his arms (he was a boy of about three

as old as my son was when he told to me

this story.)

All at once his wife

Grabbed the boy

Away from Chaim

And held him to her breast.

“Vaat are you dooink”

he said surprised

at her urgent plea.

“Chaim,” she said,

“vee are to die. Vee are to DIE.”

They left together

On another train

He never saw them

Again.

They died just like she said

they would (or so he so

presumed.)

The sycophantic sick

German Nazis

which ran the camps

liked to play games.

Chaim’s cousin was

With him in the same camp.

One day they set the prisoners

Out for a forced march or run

Barefoot in the cold.

All at once they yelled

“Alle Juden halten”

All the Jews stop!

His cousin thinking they wanted

The reverse kept running

As did the others (mostly gentiles)

Chaim stopped at once.

His cousin was shot in the back.

It was the luck of the draw.

Another time they dug a big pit

And there were rocks and stones

of all sizes and shapes.

And this was their game:

You had to go down and get a stone

and bring it to the top of the pit.

& everytime you got another stone

you had to bring a larger one up.

So Chaim (who knew the  Nazis

tired sooner than later

of their games) espied

the situation.

He reasoned (eef oi take

a teeny leetle pebble foist

ahnd then oi’ll take a leetle

biggah, I veel be able to take

ounteel dey might get tired

And so he carefully looked

(But not too slowly or the

guards would get upset)

to get the tiniest rocks he

could so that  he could pick

the larger ones and still

climb the pit.

He saw several of his

comrades fall beneath

the weight of the rocks

they could not carry

as that pit became

their grave.

But Chaim survived:

Was it his cunning

or did the Nazis tire

of  their game before

it was his time to expire?

Chaim was freed by the

Americans in forty-five,

Just about the time I arrive

Upon the scene. He was

Dying of dysentery in the camp

And, as luck would have it

He espied (or was espied upon)

a doctor from his town

Who had been in the same

camp confined there all the time.

Chaim was shitting his brains

Out and he would have surely died

When his friend the doctor told

The authorities to feed him

Pancakes and they made him

Bind and he survived

To tell to me his story;

And I tell it now to you.

I saw his yellow sewn-on

Jewish star, his mogen David

On his strip`ed jacket worn

And so I know his story

To be true.

Chaim finished out his days in

The Bronx: he was a Jewish

Ghetto landlord.

His second wife died of ovarian cancer

At sixty-five, leaving him

A widower once again.

He never told his second son

About his former life or wife

Or that his son had a brother

Who had died in the camps.

Alzheimer’s disease finally

Accomplished what the Nazis

Could not.

Number nine

Number nine

Number nine.

number 9

number 9

number 9…

number nein

number nein

number nein…..

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