Nein
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…..
