POETRY ON THE SHOAH






MARJORIE STAMM ROSENFELD

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

Earlier, their mothers had used burlap
to cover their nakedness. Now,
the soldiers wrapped them in sacks,
looping the cloth, wrenching the tops tight,
the writhing forms inside
no proof against this packaging.

Target practice in Radziwilov.

As a Bishop once told a Rabbi who came to plead,
No such thing as an innocent Jewish child.

Easy to shoot
when you can't see the whites of their eyes.
Easy to bury a bunch of burlap bags
in dirt you own anyway.

Afterward, the dirt moved.
They say the dirt moved afterward
for a long time.



* * *

MARJORIE STAMM ROSENFELD

ANGEL

The heavy iron doors
that closed to leave them naked in the dark
came open with a burst of light. Through fog
already descending, shouts:
The dwarfs! Where are the dwarfs?
Dragged out again.
What researcher could resist
an opportunity like this?

The catch numbered seven
Lilliputs, a troupe of Jews from Hungary
who played and sang; two full-sized sisters,
interesting by virtue of deformity
in siblings; also, a child named Samson.
Too soon to tell what he would be. Still
he made the tenth delivered. Mengele
brought blankets, fed them milk
to make them vomit up the gas,
ordered special nourishments. Behind,
a line of gray-faced men
that moved across the killing fields
as if in shadow play.

Delicate physician, Mengele
plucked the marrow out of bones
positioned needles into nerves
pumped foreign fluids into wombs
brought toys for Baby Samson.
Once the child called him "Papa."
I am your uncle, chuckled Mengele.
He was fond of this family.
These were the Lilliputs,
his pet monkeys.

They got their chance performing too.
He sent perfume and makeup,
told them they must look their best.
Onstage, a thunderclap command
Clothes off! Under hot lights
the dwarfs stood shivering,
an illustrated lesson in anatomy -
medical experiments described,
and features of each little limb
delineated with a billiard cue. Mengele
flourished his baton like a conductor
ringing in die walkure. Behind,
heavy metal doors
were clanging shut again.

It has been written He who saves one life
is as if he saved the world. Mengele
saved ten, condemning more,
shadow men he waved aside.
The Lilliputs survived the war.
Talmudic commentary stops
before our modern age.
What can your sages say
of a man like Mengele?



>Marjorie Stamm Rosenfeld is a retired US Department of Defense analyst. She makes "ShtetLinks" web sites about perished Jewish communities in Eastern Europe as a volunteer with JewishGen, an Internet organization devoted to Jewish genealogy.

Marjorie is also a poet. Her poems have appeared in several US literary journals. Her maternal grandfather was born in Vilna (Wilno, Vilnius) in 1861, was educated at the yeshivot of Volozhyn and Mir, immigrated to America in 1887, and became Rabbi Herman Simon of St. Paul, MN.




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