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HOLOCAUST POETRY
by Lois E. Olena
For the past seven years Lois Olena has been transcribing Holocaust survivor
interviews for the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive in
Philadelphia, where she did an M.A. in Jewish Studies. It is only in recent
months that she has begun writing poetry based on her experience of hearing
close to 500 survivor/liberator/witness first-hand accounts of this
horrendous Nazi brutality. "Time is running out for gathering these
first-hand accounts, and it is important that as much material as possible be
archived so as to combat the lunacy of the revisionists. Also, as a
Christian, I feel it is important for the Christian world to understand
Jewish history and to do all that we can to assure that nothing like what
happened under Hitler will ever happen again. Poetry has a way of moving
people to feel--in some small, but very personal, way--what the victims of
the Holocaust suffered."
The Archivist
by Lois E. Olena
Note by note
I type the awful history
of the victims of the
Third Reich.
Misery
like dirt under my fingernails
plays out through my soft, safe digits;
haunting violin tones
fade away as the next song begins
slowly
sparingly
luscious
soft chords
rock me, caress me...
rock me, sway me...
side to side
like a cattle car fading into the distance.
What is this caught in my throat?
turnips?
raw potatoes?
black bread?
No matter;
move on, they're waiting.
Hurry, finish.
Pay your bills.
Feed your face.
Play your PC piano
until weariness from the death march
lays you gently down in the snow
for your afternoon nap
and you dream
that the knock on your door
is the UPS man
come to take you away.
11/9/96, Based on the transcription work for the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History
Archive
Behind the Monastery
Lois E. Olena
My fingers froze today
when I stood in the rain
behind a Polish monastery-
cold
wet
arms heavy, shaking with fear
and my allowed bundle.
The light from the candles
of my warm home
followed after me
like long shadows chasing,
crying for my return.
Front door agape
gentile rape
trucks at the gate
goyische ants in a long line
carrying off 600 years of history,
tucking it lustily into their
conscience-seared pockets.
Bone wet
I watch
as Council members
under rifle
dig obediently
and the earth opens up
to swallow my rabbi
and his sons.
Mach schnell! I hear in my nightmare...
and as I turn to leave,
I notice that the earth still moves
where they buried my heart.
12/11/96 Lois E. Olena -written in the midst of typing the survivor testimony of M.K.
"My fingers did freeze, and I couldn't go on until I wrote about this." Lois Olena
Homeland
Lois E. Olena
It was Christmas eve
and there was no room in the inn,
the Oswiecim inn,
so the Arrow Cross
took the children,
barefooted
and in their nighties,
out to the Danube
and filled their little bellies
not with bread
but bullets
flipping them
like tiddlywinks
into the congealing, icy river below.
It was the Red Danube
that night,
choking on the blood
of orphan Jews
whose little Blue faces
floated downstream
touring even all of Europe
until they washed up
on the shores of Eretz Yisrael
and came back to life,
their little blue and white
bodies
raised high,
flapping in the wind.
12/18/96 Lois E. Olena, based on the true account of a Hungarian survivor of the
Holocaust.
Panning For Gold
by by Lois E. Olena
(a poem from a poem)
Slaves, these speculators,
calves hugged by bony mud
fingers wrapped like bread ties
around shovels
marked to transport
one last time-
earth to earth,
grave to field.
Nazi grinding machines
pulverize at last
these bones that grew
in mother's womb
now from this tomb
brought out and crushed.
They sprinkle these upon the earth
like so much dust
but first Jews must
sieve fast for gold.
look close! that Piece!
that Golden Shine!
from teeth now scattered,
left behind.
1/31/97
Written after reading the poem, "Holocaust," by Charles Reznikoff, Jewish-American
narative poet, 1894-1976. ("Holocaust," written in 1975, was based on
details taken from the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials. Trained as a lawyer and
a journalist, Reznikoff's poetry "presents facts with straightforward
*
immediacy without commenting on them directly." *
I could not help but comment
upon the story he told in this portion of his poem, where he describes a
group of Jewish inmates being forced to exhume a mass grave and dispose of
the bones by grinding them and spreading them on a nearby field. Before they
did, though, they were forced to sift the crushed bones of the victims to
find any gold from their teeth.
*From the book Holocaust Poetry, p. 216 (edited by Hilda Schiff)
Selection
He said he was my brother,
this son of Esau,
this redeemed soul
giving guided tours of Israel.
Fat old ladies hung on his words,
looking up at him,
(the handsome darling),
squirming with an uneasy delight
as he tickled their chins
with feathers of information.
He was my new hero, too,
until the day
we alighted onto Jerusalem
like hungry little Christian flies
lapping up the dung of history.
It was then that I looked at the schedule
and voiced my virgin thought,
"Aren't we going to Yad Vashem?
It's not far from here."
He turned, then, "Yes, oh, well,
I guess.
You'll have a choice
at lunch.
We'll park near there
and if you won't eat
you'll have 30 minutes
to go through the museum."
I waited.
I looked up at him.
He shifted his weight.
"It's enough, you know.
I mean, it happened, yes.
But enough talk...
Did I mention, by the way,
that I still have the keys
to my mother's house
in east Jerusalem?"
So there I stood,
in front of this man,
making my selection
left or right
lunch or death.
Bruised by the gauntlet
of his pugnacious words
I turned,
wiping up the blood that had
spurted from my ears
boxed numb from initiation.
I choose death, I say.
No question about it.
After all,
it's only for half an hour.
1/21/97, about going to Yad Vashem in 1987 (after coming face to face with
Arab anti-Semitism for the first time)
Ghosts on My Bookshelf
There are others, I'm sure,
aware of how they did it-
Anne and Primo-
but not I.
Ignorant of their methods,
their brutal, final blows,
I muse this peaceful morning
on their nagging despairs,
swirling around like the light brown coffee
under my chin.
Unique, her hopelessness, from his, of course,
but pain is pain.
Her poetry bleeds years of pain;
one wonders, is this art
fiction?
Or auto-biographical screams from the cliff?
Primo emerges from death,
to life,
to death.
I know more of his nightmares.
I have heard the voices, hundreds,
of his fellow survivors,
those who came from death
(but to life! To life!)
My son, the doctor,
my granddaughter, ach, you should see her.
But you, Anne,
who could have done these things to you?
What monster mother? What evil man?
What demon of torture?
What self hate?
How friendless you look there, how pale.
I am surprised, Mr. Levi, that
thousands more have not followed you,
stabbed by the unconscionable news
that you and they themselves are not believed,
that there are men (men?) who walk this earth
laughing
denying
learning nothing
while the soil under their ghoulish feet
rumbles with muted history.
One would think the streets would be full
of raving lunatics-
Jews, Gypsies, and other escapee "vermin"-
screaming, waving daggers,
threatening self-destruction
to end this torment, this up-at-night
relived madness of theirs.
Instead, over 50 years ago now
they changed clothes
grew hair
raced into a lover's arms
rushed to a midwife's hands
bundled the baby
and hopped ship
leaving that damn continent
behind,
trading nothing for
barely something,
making a future
from one dress sold
and a profit made
to buy another and soon-look-
we have enough for our own little shop.
My daughter, the CPA,
my son, the lawyer.
"Papa was a cattle dealer.
My Zayde was the shochet in our village.
Mama fed the poor
when they would come to our house, wanting.
Bubbe waved her dough-smooth hands
over candles on Shabbat.
Me, I died,
then washed up nearly alive
in America the beautiful,
in Eretz Yisrael, land of kings, priests, prophets,
bloodied warriors."
Anne? I don't know you very well.
But Primo, I think you didn't just want
to live,
or to be left alone,
but at least, at the very least,
to be believed.
-Lois E. Olena
1/11/97, thinking about the suicides of poets Anne Sexton and Primo Levi
Teaching the Holocaust
They wanted to know,
so I came,
took them by the hand
and led them down
to the shore.
"There is no gear
here to wear," I said.
"Here we walk out
together
til the water is
to our necks,
then we
take deep breaths
and go under.
We keep our eyes open
though what we see
will sting them.
In this abyss of red
we will tread hard
with arms and legs
strong from youth.
We will listen
for the earth's
groaning as we swim,
and feel the waves of
her weariness
as our own lungs
are crushed in the
chambers of history."
2/27/97, after teaching
a fifth grade class about
the Holocaust (2/26/97)
Lois Olena was raised in a Christian home, father was a pastor, attended Christian college,
presently involved in inner city and hospital visitation ministry
happily married 16 years, two children (6 ; 8)
B.S. in Bible, M.A. in Jewish Studies, licensed minister
co-partner in home business, "Keystrokes" (computer business)
also has self-published a book of poetry - "Words in Your Ear"
kimel@systec.com
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