Julia E. Wahl
Peace
Zecher Yonatan
In remembrance of Jonathan
Salomon, your father standing there in the Auschwitz uniform, the Shield of David on his shoulder.
Esther, your mother lies naked on a pile of rotten bodies, she has a number tattooed on her forearm.
Rachel, your sister was already dead by then, she died in a ghetto in Łódź[1].
And you were nine and you survived, the death march[2] did not kill you.
You came back to Kraków[3] but nobody was there anymore.
Your house was empty, only a Menorah standing on the table.
Your school had a Swastika[4] painted on its wall.
They had to put you in an orphanage, and there were other children with you.
Francio became your best friend, but you had to leave. “You’re going home”, they told you one day, and you didn’t understand but they took anyway.
You finally came to Eretz Yisrael[5] but it was so different from all that you knew.
And many years have passed but you have not yet found your peace, and every dream reminded you of Cyclone B[6].
On your twenty-fifth birthday you married Ofra, a Sephardic[7] Jew.
“I’m your ‘ahava‘[8]”, she said, and you almost forgot about the childhood’s horror, about Rabbi Ibn-Ibrahim who was killed on the ‘Kristallnacht’[9].
And you were almost free again...
Your wife gave you a son, Salomon you named him after his grandfather.
He was a beautiful boy and when he was older he joined the IDF[10].
You were so proud and you would say - “My Dear Solek, what a great soldier he is”.
On the Yom HaShoah[11] your son was killed, shot by a Palestinian gunman.
You would then visit his grave everyday and pray to ‘Yahweh’ for your final rest as life had no meaning anymore,
And He would listen to your prayers and you would attain your peace.
One spring day you noticed a little boy, the child’s body was shaking with sobs
And you recognized the same fear that you once had in your eyes.
You covered the body of his Palestinian mother.
You took him home, and he became your son.
Peace, that was his name.
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Copyright by Julia E. Wahl 2001
E-mail: KarmaYesheTsomo@gmail.com
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[1] Lodz Polish city that was home to the first major ghetto in April 1940. 144,000 people lived in 1.6 square miles in September 1941. After growing in size with immigrants from conquered lands, many were sent to Chełmno and in 1944 the ghetto was liquidated and the remaining Jews were sent to Auschwitz
[2] When Russian armies moved in from the East, the concentration camps were taken apart and the prisoners marched to Germany, in camps such as Bergen-Belsen. A third of the prisoners died in January 1945.
[3] (Pol.); (Eng.) Cracow; (Ger.) Krakau - A city in Poland, not so far from Auschwitz-Birkenau camps
[4] Symbol of the Nazis, a cross with equal arms bent at a right angle. It was an ancient symbol of good luck and is a contemporary symbol of the Hindu religion. Some believe the Swastika was the root of the Indo-European scripts
[5] (Heb.) The Land of Israel
[6] Zyklon B While other gas chambers used carbon monoxide, Auschwitz used this cyanide gas made of prussic acid from a company partly owned by I.G. Farben
[7] of Mediterranean Jewish tradition
[9] "Night of Broken Glass," Nazi pogrom on Nov. 9-10, 1938; the worst pogrom ever, it marked the Holocaust's start
[10] Israeli Defence Forces
[11] Holocaust Memorial Day
