Saturday, April 30, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: Rachmones III

“It took some time before I began to realize that there were people lying there at my feet who had been killed only a short while before.” – Filip Müller

Their pressed uniforms
stood out like blood on
a veined marble head stone.
The ash and snow mixed
under their feet. Each soldier
weighed more than two
or three prisoners combined.

Tissue stretched taut between
bones – he no longer knew
how people could still be alive.
The line between life
and death began to fray.

Singed with the scent of silence.
Pink skin now gray ash.
The smell of blackened flesh
turned his barren stomach.

After months of touching
the hands of the dead
he began to envy those
he saw gasping for air.
He wished it would be over.

He could no longer remember
what fresh air tasted like.
The air would forever remain
dry and thick in his lungs –
this is what it is like to taste sorrow.

Haunted by the whispers only
G-d was meant to hear.

When he was younger,
he used to be afraid
to go to sleep; now
he was afraid to wake up.


About Filip Müller

Deported from Sered, Czechoslovakia, Filip Muller (#29236) worked for three years as a prisoner in the “Sonderkommando” in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. Every day he saw the flames extinguished of many, now forgotten, candles. Frequently writing notes about his experiences, Müller spent years after his liberation trying to educate all those who would listen to his account but he did not compile and publish his testimony until 1970 under the title Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Ivan R. Dee, Publishers: Chicago (IL), 1979). Müller has lived in Western Europe since 1969.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: Sabbath Gassing

“I went to the pillar near which the girls had talked to me. There I found the girl Yana who had asked me to take off her necklace and give it to her lover as a last keepsake. She lay where she had said she would. I took off the necklace, pocketed it and left the room.” – Filip Müller

They walked through the doors
with their right hands raised
looking to brush their kissed fingers
against the mezuzah that was not there.

The showers were used in solitude.
No guards in the room.
This was their time to destroy silence.

The sun set with the
latching of the double doors.

The Sabbath greetings began.
“Shabbat Shalom!”
Voices repeated,
muting the constant echoes.

The dialogue ceased as
the air became thick and
their bodies remained dry.

The pipes did not
flush with water –
they hissed with gas
as the screaming began.


About Filip Müller

Deported from Sered, Czechoslovakia, Filip Muller (#29236) worked for three years as a prisoner in the “Sonderkommando” in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. Every day he saw the flames extinguished of many, now forgotten, candles. Frequently writing notes about his experiences, Müller spent years after his liberation trying to educate all those who would listen to his account but he did not compile and publish his testimony until 1970 under the title Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Ivan R. Dee, Publishers: Chicago (IL), 1979). Müller has lived in Western Europe since 1969.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: Rachmones II

“Behind it a round red-brick chimney rose up into the sky.” – Filip Müller

The handle sizzled in
his snow chapped palm.

As he pulled the furnace door
he could hear the air caress
the ashen body within.

He paused. The bitter taste
of parched flesh
seized his muscles.

The guard turned and began
a slow walk in Filip’s direction.
In his eyes, sinister delight
glowed brighter as he inched
toward ‘his’ inmate.

His neck bulged as his arm
rose and his fist clenched.
Filip pulled the iron door open
but he could not avoid the assault.


About Filip Müller

Deported from Sered, Czechoslovakia, Filip Muller (#29236) worked for three years as a prisoner in the “Sonderkommando” in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. Every day he saw the flames extinguished of many, now forgotten, candles. Frequently writing notes about his experiences, Müller spent years after his liberation trying to educate all those who would listen to his account but he did not compile and publish his testimony until 1970 under the title Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Ivan R. Dee, Publishers: Chicago (IL), 1979). Müller has lived in Western Europe since 1969.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: Job

“I was like one hypnotized and obeyed each order implicitly. Fear of more blows, the ghastly sight of piled-up corpses, the biting smoke, the humming of fans and the flickering of flames, the whole infernal chaos had paralysed my sense of orientation as well as my ability to think.” – Filip Müller

The wooden doors slid to the right
and unnumbered inmates were
forced in to the mass of humanity.

The fire hose hissed as droplets
fell and froze to their lips.

They patiently shuffled their feet
across sheets of crystallized tears.

Their clothes stiff with icy sweat.

The able bodied were embroidered
with needled ink. Their numbers
stripped them of nearly everything,
leaving only that which damned them:
their blood and their faith.

Filip was chosen to live;
chosen to watch others die;
chosen to stay warm on
the coldest days as families,
towns, and villages were
reduced to smoke and ash.

His breath choked thick
with the tribes and lineage
of every Jew. This was a test
Job was never forced to endure.


About Filip Müller

Deported from Sered, Czechoslovakia, Filip Muller (#29236) worked for three years as a prisoner in the “Sonderkommando” in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. Every day he saw the flames extinguished of many, now forgotten, candles. Frequently writing notes about his experiences, Müller spent years after his liberation trying to educate all those who would listen to his account but he did not compile and publish his testimony until 1970 under the title Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Ivan R. Dee, Publishers: Chicago (IL), 1979). Müller has lived in Western Europe since 1969.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: Rachmones I

“We had been running for about 100 metres, when a strange flat-roofed building loomed up before us.” – Filip Müller

In the distance, with the air
above the stacks still,
ovens stood in industrial
innocence within their brick
and mortar womb.

The furnace lay cold and gray
with its cast iron door swung open,
and waited to receive the next Jew –
to embrace them in its crucible heart.

In silent slavery and in slumber
the bodies kept flowing past
Filip like a swollen stream.

Ice and snow singed his feet.
The inhumanity of the inanimate.


About Filip Müller

Deported from Sered, Czechoslovakia, Filip Muller (#29236) worked for three years as a prisoner in the “Sonderkommando” in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. Every day he saw the flames extinguished of many, now forgotten, candles. Frequently writing notes about his experiences, Müller spent years after his liberation trying to educate all those who would listen to his account but he did not compile and publish his testimony until 1970 under the title Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers (Ivan R. Dee, Publishers: Chicago (IL), 1979). Müller has lived in Western Europe since 1969.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: A Pure Breath

“What matters is that all this did happen.” – Janusz Korczak

The boy pushed away sleep and,
blinking his silent eyes in the candlelight,
he listened to Korczak’s voice.

Echoing above the soldier’s
ash-muffled steps, the only
sound in the camp was
the doctor’s paper cracking
like a stiff flag in a sharp
breeze as he chiseled lead
onto what once was white.

Despite his arthritic fingers,
he had written hundreds of
pages in the ghetto;
but these were the first
curled letters of his Kaddish.
This was his last leaf of script;
the last journal entry which
would never leave his hand.

This was his voice that would rain
down with his body and
rest in the lungs of Treblinka.


About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak was an elderly doctor who cared for countless children at an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Born Henryk Goldzmit in 1878, Korczak first made a name for himself in Poland as a pediatrician, writer, and children’s rights advocate. Korczak would later change his name to shield himself from the growing anti-Semitism of the time. He wrote autobiographical novels at the turn of the century as well as founding the first children’s newspaper, The Little Review, and he had a radio program as “the Old Doctor.” Later, he gave up his medical practice to establish the first progressive orphanages in Warsaw. From that point until the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Korczak wrote about children and for children. Korczak was 64 when he began writing Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press: New Haven (CT), 2003). Refusing numerous attempts at freedom, Korczak died with his children at Treblinka.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: The Last Sign of God in the World

“Now that every day brings so many strange and sinister experiences and sensations I have completely ceased to dream.” – Janusz Korczak

Below the smokestack sky
the rose pressed up from under
the concrete Treblinka wall.
It was the only color seen
from the crowded cattle car.

Korczak followed his pupils’
dry eyes as they passed
the flower and entered the camp.

The petals haunted the doctor.
They were the same red
he had seen dripping from
the children’s chapped hands.

Janusz knew the rose was
the same red as the fire that
caused hundreds of mothers
to fall on the heads of sons
and daughters they never knew.

The train stopped, the doors
opened, and the doctor led
his students into the cold
smoldering courtyard. As
his young Jews huddled and
clamped around his waist,
the crimson rose
continued to haunt his eyes.


About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak was an elderly doctor who cared for countless children at an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Born Henryk Goldzmit in 1878, Korczak first made a name for himself in Poland as a pediatrician, writer, and children’s rights advocate. Korczak would later change his name to shield himself from the growing anti-Semitism of the time. He wrote autobiographical novels at the turn of the century as well as founding the first children’s newspaper, The Little Review, and he had a radio program as “the Old Doctor.” Later, he gave up his medical practice to establish the first progressive orphanages in Warsaw. From that point until the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Korczak wrote about children and for children. Korczak was 64 when he began writing Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press: New Haven (CT), 2003). Refusing numerous attempts at freedom, Korczak died with his children at Treblinka.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: With His Children

“The world knows nothing of many great Poles.”- Janusz Korczak

Some children high stepped, others
had to be dragged by their armbands,
but most of them, free
from the crucible orphanage walls,
blindly obeyed the doctor.

“They don’t want you, just the children!”

He never replied to the pleading few.
He only broke step twice with his troop--
the first was to make sure the children followed;
the second was to hand a stack of papers
to a coughing soot-haired youth-- the
one child in the crowd that day not being
forced to march. Then, the doctor
resumed his pace as caboose of the line.

The ghetto sea thinned as the
hazy box car opened its doors--
for every child that entered the train,
ten people lost their voices.

When the doctor was the only one left
to walk through the sliding doors,
the solitary thing that could be heard
was the ticking of a pocket watch
lying in the corner of the cattle car.

Tick! Tick! Tick!


About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak was an elderly doctor who cared for countless children at an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Born Henryk Goldzmit in 1878, Korczak first made a name for himself in Poland as a pediatrician, writer, and children’s rights advocate. Korczak would later change his name to shield himself from the growing anti-Semitism of the time. He wrote autobiographical novels at the turn of the century as well as founding the first children’s newspaper, The Little Review, and he had a radio program as “the Old Doctor.” Later, he gave up his medical practice to establish the first progressive orphanages in Warsaw. From that point until the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Korczak wrote about children and for children. Korczak was 64 when he began writing Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press: New Haven (CT), 2003). Refusing numerous attempts at freedom, Korczak died with his children at Treblinka.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: The Assistant’s Diary: August 4th, 1942

“For in the hour of reckoning I am not inside a solitary cell of the saddest hospital in the world but surrounded by butterflies and grasshoppers, and I can hear a concert of crickets and a soloist high up in the sky- the skylark.” – Janusz Korczak

The doctor has been writing fewer pages
as the calendar has pared its months.
What was once an opus of aspirations
has become a ghetto diary--
recording occurrences of the day.

His thoughts are becoming weak.
The eloquent script used to pen
A Child’s Right to Respect
is now a collection of
abandoned words-- he knows
his energy can no longer
be wasted on literary devices.

I see the doctor has finished for tonight.
I hope to get them done quickly
so I may also sleep.

Amidst the children’s
cacophony of coughs,
the typewriter keys popped
with every staggered finger stroke
like moist maple wood in a flame.

These are the last words
the ink embossed on the page:

“I am watering the flowers. My bald head in the window. What a splendid target.
“He has a rifle. Why is he standing and looking on calmly?
“He has no orders to shoot.
“And perhaps he was a village teacher in civilian life, or a notary, a street sweeper in Leipzig, a waiter in Cologne?
“What would he do if I nodded to him? Waved my hand in a friendly gesture?
“Perhaps he doesn’t even know that things are- as they are?
“He may have arrived only yesterday, from far away…”


About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak was an elderly doctor who cared for countless children at an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Born Henryk Goldzmit in 1878, Korczak first made a name for himself in Poland as a pediatrician, writer, and children’s rights advocate. Korczak would later change his name to shield himself from the growing anti-Semitism of the time. He wrote autobiographical novels at the turn of the century as well as founding the first children’s newspaper, The Little Review, and he had a radio program as “the Old Doctor.” Later, he gave up his medical practice to establish the first progressive orphanages in Warsaw. From that point until the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Korczak wrote about children and for children. Korczak was 64 when he began writing Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press: New Haven (CT), 2003). Refusing numerous attempts at freedom, Korczak died with his children at Treblinka.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: A Hundred Stars

“People are naïve and good-hearted. And probably unhappy.”- Janusz Korczak

He strolled through
sidewalk slush to
collect donations used
to support his children;
they were contributions
needed to prevent his Jews
from being forgotten.
With his daily persistence, he
eagerly received tattered marks
from ghetto inmates without
concern for his reputation; 
this is what King Matthew
would have done.

At night, by the light
of a hundred blue stars glowing
from frayed threads wrapped
around the sleeping children,
he would write in his journal
with a pencil sharpened at both ends.
This was his lull of huddled peace
when he could record,
not yet a Kaddish for his children,
rather a prayer: to be able
to live through another day.
By morning, his smudged plea
had faded from the page.
Ink was precious--
its permanence was reserved
for lists marked by the SS.

Beyond the orphanage,
the only people who knew
the names of his flock
wore swastikas
stamped on their sleeves.
So long as his children
were carried on a clipboard
titled “Treblinka” he would
never let the executioner’s pen
forget the name Korczak.


About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak was an elderly doctor who cared for countless children at an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Born Henryk Goldzmit in 1878, Korczak first made a name for himself in Poland as a pediatrician, writer, and children’s rights advocate. Korczak would later change his name to shield himself from the growing anti-Semitism of the time. He wrote autobiographical novels at the turn of the century as well as founding the first children’s newspaper, The Little Review, and he had a radio program as “the Old Doctor.” Later, he gave up his medical practice to establish the first progressive orphanages in Warsaw. From that point until the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Korczak wrote about children and for children. Korczak was 64 when he began writing Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press: New Haven (CT), 2003). Refusing numerous attempts at freedom, Korczak died with his children at Treblinka.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: Children’s Games

“Everything else has its limits, only brazen shamelessness is limitless… I wish I had nothing, so that they might see it for themselves, and that would be that.” – Janusz Korczak

Playing jacks was all she would do.
Every day.

Occasionally the doctor
would step on a jack. He
always picked them up
and returned them to
the little girl. Every time,
he noticed her hands seemed
colder than the pointed metal.

She gradually lost them all
despite his efforts to find them.
Small rocks from gutters
proved to be adequate substitutes--
they were easier on feet as well.

When she lost the pink rubber ball,
the only thing for her to do was sleep.
The guard knew what he was doing.


About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak was an elderly doctor who cared for countless children at an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Born Henryk Goldzmit in 1878, Korczak first made a name for himself in Poland as a pediatrician, writer, and children’s rights advocate. Korczak would later change his name to shield himself from the growing anti-Semitism of the time. He wrote autobiographical novels at the turn of the century as well as founding the first children’s newspaper, The Little Review, and he had a radio program as “the Old Doctor.” Later, he gave up his medical practice to establish the first progressive orphanages in Warsaw. From that point until the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Korczak wrote about children and for children. Korczak was 64 when he began writing Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press: New Haven (CT), 2003). Refusing numerous attempts at freedom, Korczak died with his children at Treblinka.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: Without His Mother to Light the Candles

“Two o’clock in the morning. Silence.” – Janusz Korczak

The violin slid through his fingers,
singing through every shaking note.
The bow frayed under his bony hand
while the strings pitched and swayed
across the paper’s faded bars.

He played every night
through the span of a candle.

Melting light rolled down the stem and
swept across the table; he began to weep.
Once the wax dripped off the edge and
onto his bare knee, the tears ceased,
the music stopped; his voice whispered,
“Shalom.”


About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak was an elderly doctor who cared for countless children at an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Born Henryk Goldzmit in 1878, Korczak first made a name for himself in Poland as a pediatrician, writer, and children’s rights advocate. Korczak would later change his name to shield himself from the growing anti-Semitism of the time. He wrote autobiographical novels at the turn of the century as well as founding the first children’s newspaper, The Little Review, and he had a radio program as “the Old Doctor.” Later, he gave up his medical practice to establish the first progressive orphanages in Warsaw. From that point until the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Korczak wrote about children and for children. Korczak was 64 when he began writing Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press: New Haven (CT), 2003). Refusing numerous attempts at freedom, Korczak died with his children at Treblinka.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Holocaust Poem of the Day: Door to Door and Back

“The children are living in constant uncertainty, in fear.” – Janusz Korczak

He slid through the hallway
on the soles of his blistered feet,
ignoring the usual volunteers.
It was the cracks, like veins in
forest green and gray marble,

that reminded the doctor of why
he left every day to collect donations--
like the children the cracks
grew both higher and deeper.

Korczak eased down the stairs.
The reality of the railing was that
each time he leaned on it
for support it became looser--
without reinforcements it would break.

Slightly winded from his descent,
the doctor approached the fragile
Krochmalna Street door and listened.
Once the muffled clicking
of an officer’s shoes passed,
he grasped his thinning coat,
braced himself for the
hypothermic Warsaw winter,
and walked into stinging snow.

Drifts muted his footsteps,
silence enveloped the ghetto--
as soundless as a still clapper.
Not a single ringing coin
echoed in the hush--
each mother had her
own children to sustain.

Cracks in the wall had grown
by the time the doctor returned.
He had nothing to fill them.


About Janusz Korczak

Janusz Korczak was an elderly doctor who cared for countless children at an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Born Henryk Goldzmit in 1878, Korczak first made a name for himself in Poland as a pediatrician, writer, and children’s rights advocate. Korczak would later change his name to shield himself from the growing anti-Semitism of the time. He wrote autobiographical novels at the turn of the century as well as founding the first children’s newspaper, The Little Review, and he had a radio program as “the Old Doctor.” Later, he gave up his medical practice to establish the first progressive orphanages in Warsaw. From that point until the beginning of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Korczak wrote about children and for children. Korczak was 64 when he began writing Ghetto Diary (Yale University Press: New Haven (CT), 2003). Refusing numerous attempts at freedom, Korczak died with his children at Treblinka.