Modern Hebrew Poetry - Shoah and Theodicy שירה עברית מודרנית - שואה וצדק אלקי

To the Corpses Hill in the Snow / Uri Tzvi Greenberg

Translation: Haim Ovadia

And when my father was taken to the Corpses Hill

in the snows of the foreign field

the German oppressor cried out: Ausziehen![1]

and my father understood the verdict.

My father stripped himself from his coat and his pants

as one who strips himself from the mundane-ness of this world,

took off his shoes as in the Eve of Tisha Be’Av

and stayed standing with his whites and socks..

What can be more naked than this nakedness under the dome of heaven and in the snows of the field

in the very day in the world?

Never in his life did he stand like that

in white nakedness under the dome of heaven

and a black dome on his head,

except for when standing in front of his bed at nights

and except in the bathhouse on the moment before going down to immerse..

Because only then would he also remove his whites and socks and remove his kippah

and would not look at the nakedness of his flesh

until the water covered him from here and there:

as one who goes down to bow down in the depths.

But when the oppressor saw that my father still stands with his whites and a black dome on his head,

that wicked men hit him between his shoulders with his cold blade,

my father coughed and fell to the ground on his face:

as falling in the face of God: a deep bow to the bottom of life and he never got up again.

He sighed a sigh as the conclusion of a last prayer, after which there is no more prayer,

only cloudy Sky and a hill of corpses and a living steaming oppressor in distant snows.

And on the two sides of the face of Father-Holiness the snow melted,

reddened, because of the blood streaming from the mouth, from the punctured lung.

And as the oppressor saw that my father does not get up on his feet,

he stuck the butt of his black boot under the belly of Father-Holiness

and kicked him and turned him on his back -

and the face of my father was: as if the land of the Goyim kicked it as well.

And as the night fell the stars shimmered

and there was a hill of corpses in the field

and the nightly snow came down, came down with soft cruel abundance..

that is how Elohim wanted it.

Elohim was felt in the existence - and He was of the Goyim. There is Elohim in the world but there is no Elohim for Israel.

That lone-snow was a witness. Came down with cruel abundance

And that elderly man happened to come to that place:

Rabbi Uri of Strzelisk[1] the fiery angel

and there was no sound for his footsteps in the place

and there were no waves of the breathing nostrils in the air..

and he opened his mouth and said in a whisper:

Rabbi Chaim son of Rabbi Yitzhak Eleiezr my grandson

A body which was a violin for the prayers of Israel

a mouth producing comfort for the broken-hearted of Israel

How will you be covered by snow in a field of Goyim with no boundary

Where did your prayers go to my grandson

Where did my prayers go to

To which abyss in the world - -

moving and crawling from the hill of corpses

the little son of my sister whose name was Shmuel

and who was called Shmultchi affectionately -

moved and crawled to the feet of Saba Rabbi Uri of Strzelisk the fiery angel –

and wept like a boy and he did not open his eye because he could not,

and he felt with the palms of his little hands Saba’s shoes.

Saba bowed down to him and kissed him on his forehead and said to him:

my baby, my holy baby!

Anonymous in the Rain / Avraham Halfi (1904-1980)

I know not words

Of which a prayer is born.

All the words were lost in my voice

And became dark stillness.

But my eyes still see

The glint in a child’s eye.

And more my eyes see,

A star, none like it in shine.

And worried-face mothers

Leading their children to the light.

What will be of them? What will be?

Hear their breathing joy.

As springtime which seems to never leave.

I bow down to the image of God

Who is concealed from me eyes.

Please do not harm the innocent,

They know not why.

Lightning strikes a tree,

Which bears its fruit innocently.

Please do not harm the innocent,

They know not why man desecrates his/His image.

I know not words

Of which a prayer is born.

All the words were lost in my voice

And became dark stillness.

The song describes a fictional letter written by a Holocaust survivor who came to Israel to his beloved who remained abroad.

The letter is written in December of 1950, and the rare phenomenon it mentions, snow falling in the Tel-Aviv region, reminds the writer of the Europe’s landscapes which he tries to forget.

The Holocaust is mentioned in the song only indirectly when the writer refers to the open wound and to the one-in-a-chance for happiness.

Yaacov Gilad explained that the song is based on the stories that Yehudah’s father, Jacko Polikari of Greece and his own mother, Helena Birnbaum of Poland, both survivors of Auschwitz, told him.

He wrote: I mainly wondered how did they have the courage to bring children into a world whose most monstrous face they have known and experience so closely. It is still a wonder for me, because both Yehudah and me are children of Holocaust survivors, and we were both born five years after our parents were liberated from Auschwitz.

I wondered what went through their heads when they decided to bring children into this world, after the inferno, and in the poverty of the early days of the State of Israel, while their whole world, and everyone whom they loved, were reduced to piles of Ashes.

Then, from conversations with my mother and Yehudah's father we understood that they always had a certain hope that kept them alive, both in the death camps and the years after the war.

It was a hope that they didn't dare give up, because that hope is the essence of humanity, and to give it up would mean to hand a victory to the Devil.

This is the background for the refrain. They came here for that slight chance, rebuilt their life from zero, and gave birth to us! This is the whole story.

With My God the Blacksmith / Uri Tzvi Greenberg (1896-1981)

Like chapters of prophecy, my

days are blazing with every epiphany

Among them my body, as a lump of metal for forging.
And standing above me, my God the blacksmith is beating with might:

Each wound, cut in me by time, is sliced open
Out bursting in sparks of moments the fire bound within.

This is my fate-verdict until dusk on the road.

And as I return to cast my beaten lump on bed,
My mouth – an open wound.

And n a k e d I speak with my God: “You’ve worked hard.
Now night has come, let — both of us rest.”