YOM HASHOAH
National day of rememberance of the victims of the Holocaust.

Last night, at a fairly large gathering I read the following:

It was 1939, just before the start of the war. I was living in Paris. Anti-semitism had spread from Germany to France. My name was Frankenstein. I was 9 years old.

    Most of the time I was sitting alone,
    on the floor, by the bed, with soldiers of lead,
    an arm torn off here, a leg missing there,
    all victims of the great wars of my childhood.

    The sun filtering through the window
    and the shadow of the curtain,
    like lightning without thunder,
    brought life to my silent battlefield.

    Outside, on the street,
    young school mates of mine,
    waiting and chanting,
    sticking needles in my name,
    like pins in a voodoo doll,
    "Frankenstein, Frankenstein,
    come on out now Frankenstein"

    But I fought my battles with soldiers of lead,
    alone in my room, on the floor by the bed,
    charging up the hill, bugles blowing, flags flying,
    and the pain of fear inside.

    When my mother came home
    I ran to her arms and trembled.
    She held me and smiled
    but never asked why.
    I didn't tell her
    I was wounded that day,
    and she never knew I had cried.

Fifteen per cent of the French people collaborated with the Nazis and denounced Jews that were in hiding. My wife Monique's parents were denounced, deported, and died in Auschwitz.
    Hey Charlie!
    There's a nail in the wall
    in the room
    with the single light bulb.
    Do you remember?
    Three flights up and a fire escape
    but no one ever gets away.
    Torn sheets on the bed
    and a packed suitcase in the corner.
    Stranger things have happened,
    I know!
    Most of the time I was there,
    looking for my hat, my coat, my mother.
    She laughed.
    I told her and she laughed.
    You never show your face at the window.
    Someone might see.
    Someone might tell.
    Broken plaster on the ceiling.
    When was it they came?
    I was on the roof Charlie
    Where were you?
    Down in the basement,
    next to the boiler room.
    Oh! God! Why did you do it?
    The key.
    You gave it to them
    when you opened the door.
    Now there's a nail in the wall
    in the empty room
    and the outline of a picture
    that once hung there.
    That's all that's left.
    Remember the face Charlie?
    The smile, the eyes?
    It hangs like a loose chandelier
    over your head.
    It was long ago I know,
    But it's so hard to forget.
Eighty per cent of the French people did nothing while their friends and neighbors were taken away and shipped off to the camps.
    The trucks came rumbling down
    the Paris street at night
    You stood at the window and watched

    Uniformed French militia men
    jumped off and fanned out
    disappearing into the houses
    As lights went on, floor after floor,
    and screams were heard
    and pounding on doors
    "Dehors! Dehors! Tout le monde dehors!"
    Out, out, everyone out
    You stood at the window and watched

    They were dragged out of their beds
    and out of their lives
    in the middle of the night
    men, women and children trembling
    wearing the yellow star
    sowed on to their coats
    with a handful of belongings
    in cardboard suitcases
    You stood at the window and watched

    They poured into the streets
    from building after building
    shoved, pushed, herded, beaten
    neighbors, friends
    Frenchmen one and all
    both pushers and pushed
    abusers and victims
    "Vite! Vite!" Hurry! Hurry!

    And they left in the trucks
    swallowed up by the night
    Never to be heard from again
    You stood at the window and watched

I can't help but wonder how things might have turned out different if people had spoken up. Half of the population of Germany was Catholic. What if the Pope had issued an encyclical forbidding Catholics from participating in the Nazi terror under penalty of ex-communication? Wouldn't it have prevented the deaths of 12 million people in the Nazi death camps? Today things are happening and we are not speaking up.

    Speak up!
    Break the silence.
    Don't let them do it
    without you.
    There is no virtue
    in acquiescence.
    You're either a mover
    or a silent victim.
    Chain saws are buzzing.
    Stars are exploding.
    The rain tastes like vinegar
    and oranges glow in the dark.
    Speak up!
    Is this your doing?
    Can life go through the sieve
    and come out clean?
    Must we endure toxic waste
    in our haste
    to turn tomorrow
    into yesterday?
    Can we suffer our children
    to survive our abuses?
    Did the Holocaust teach us nothing?
    Speak up!
    There is no time.
    Break the silence
    before the dirt
    falls on your face.
ECHOES OF A DREAM

Although I never came close enough to the fire to be scorched, the radiation has penetrated my psyche and Nazi boots trampled my dreams, and Loreleis and Lily Marlenes sing under the lanterns of my past.

I recall my childhood in Paris in the late 1930s. Small and puny and dressed in the name FRANKENSTEIN, a joke to spiteful children of my age, I was the subject to laughter and derision, and a deep loneliness sucked me in, a loneliness from which I have never come out. It was the time of the "Crosses of Fire", surging fascism with its inevitable anti-Semitic credentials. It was then that I found out that I was a Jew. On the note-books I brought home from school, scribbled in children's handwriting, the words "DEATH TO JEWS" and "HANG THEM ALL" made me first aware of a religious background I had inherited and had not taken to mind.

Unthinking children, with no way to vent the bitterness that was invested in them by their authoritarian parents, ran through the streets like wild dogs chasing the Jewish lamb into a corner and biting its legs. Since there were only a few of us in each neighborhood I ran the streets alone, fleeing from the horde of misguided children and seeking refuge where none existed.

And in the distance I could hear the sound of those heavy boots marching in cadence and crushing the grapes in its path until the juice, the color of blood, splattered the streets, and the sidewalks, and the gray walls of the houses of Paris. And in the quiet that followed, a long hand, with bony fingers, reached into every corner of the French night to pluck out the Jewish flies and send them off to Auschwitz. Some had sensed the impending doom and fled from the field of disaster, and some lay so quiet and still that the hand did not see them, but most were caught in the web and carted away to their deaths in the ovens of the devil.

I was one of those who escaped the carnage. I found myself alive and well, living in New York, fifteen years of age, not quite understanding what had happened and yet branded by an everlasting loneliness which still lives in the marrow of my bones.

It was not until a few years later that I first became aware of the magnitude of the slaughter that had taken place and something inside of me rebelled. Some Jews, whose faith had never been stoic, seemed confirmed in their doubt by the question they raised on their theistic flag pole: "Where was God when six million of his chosen people were slaughtered like lambs?" And every fiber of my being revolted against this simplistic attitude. There were no outbreaks in those camps, few attempts to resist the fate that they succumbed to, no interference with the events that led them to their unnatural end, and I could not help but wonder why. And there I was in the grips of my adolescence, angry and proud, and promising myself to let no one scratch the surface of my moral fiber, reaching deep within myself for the gleaming sword of justice with which to do battle in the name of righteousness. And I entered the field of law charging on a white stallion, like a gladiator in the arena, like St.George and the dragon, like Don Quixote and the windmills. And for nearly twenty years I rammed my spear into the belly of the monster and he was barely scratched. But I was tired and weary. My body was scarred and my spirit was bleeding and I had to tend to myself.

So I took off my sword and gave away my horse and retreated to the woods. There I sat under a tree, meditating on the state of my being. I dug my fingers into the rich black soil and planted the seeds of my discontent. The seasons changed and when spring came around I saw that my seeds had given birth to beauty and realized how blind I had been. How everything is perfect. How there is no such thing as right or wrong, there is only that which is. How there is an order in the order of things and everything is in that order. And I folded my hands and let out a resounding "OM" which came out of the depths of my soul and surrounded me with a total sense of well-being.

And then . . . I had this dream:

Over the gate the sign read "AUSCHWITZ". The ground was cold under our feet as we stood naked, all in a row, waiting to be taken to the showers. That's how they did it you know, only sometimes it was a shower, and sometimes it was gas that came out of the showerheads. And the ones that followed loaded the corpses on wheelbarrows and took them to the ovens for cremation.

And there we were, shivering in the cold, following and followed by naked bodies whose flesh had fallen off from malnutrition, and the dreadful showerhouse some distance ahead. And I saw these two Hassidic Jews in front of me praying in Hebrew with undiminished faith. And I saw these two Jews in back of me grasping a last hope and saying: "Maybe it will be really a shower. After all, it's a shower once in a while. Who says it will not be a shower today?" And I saw myself in the midst of them, walking quietly with resignation, my hands folded in front of me and the words echoing in my mind: "Everything is perfect. There is no such thing as right or wrong. There is only that which is. There is an order in the order of things and everything is in that order."

Everything? EVERYTHING? And the words exploded inside my head and I let out a resounding scream. "NO! NO! Not everything. Not this. I must stand. I must fight. I must resist. Give me back my sword. There are millions of us and only a few hundred of them and if we have to die we will die our own deaths, and not theirs.

And the night faded and swept my dream away. And with the morning that followed there descended upon me a great confusion, a conflict within me between that in which I am a crusader, and that in which . . . I am a priest.

Jay Frankston
Bonfire contributor