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EmailPoems from the Third Generation
Daniel Farb,
Age 16
Toronto, Canada
What If
What if you had a life and you had a loving family,
and life wasn’t perfect,
but you wouldn’t ever ask for more?
What if you were forced from your house and family
to live in a poorly built slum
with people you’d never met?
What if all your possessions were stolen from you?
What if you lost your right to eat un-rotten food
and drink clean water?
What if you were treated like cattle
and had no room to even stretch your tired arms?
What if you life was said to be worth a penny?
What if a madman, a sick minded ignoramus,
turned the world against you?
What if you were a slave
and you were worked so hard and starved so much
that your body was skin and bones?
What if your right to shit on a toilet was stolen?
What if you watched your friends suffer and die?
What if you burned their bodies or swept up the ashes?
What if your entire family was wiped out?
What if you screamed and begged
but the world ignored your loudest cries?
What if your right to be human was stripped away?
What if you tried to escape,
tried merely to live,
but you just couldn’t breathe?
But of course this could never happen ….
of course.
What if you were a European Jew during the Holocaust?
Wisdom
When my grandparents were my age,
they were slaves to monsters.
Now they are slaves to pain from the past and present.
They get monthly cheques from Germany,
in sympathy and regret.
Money ….
To heal?
I see my mother and uncle trying to help them with little success.
Helplessness creeps up my spine and threatens to take hold.
When I see them,
when I examine their tired, loving faces,
I know they’ve been through the most horrible hell in history,
and now they suffer again with arthritis, depression and
disease after incurable disease.
so the doctors give them pill after pill.
Zaidy Ziggy,
who has somehow managed to retain his humour
through all his pain,
told my brothers and I that he eats thirty pills for breakfast every day.
Bubie Ruth,
who’s love for me
I have never doubted,
seems so tired, so concerned and scared lately.
In and out of hospitals ever since I can remember
I’m scared for her too.
Still, through an ignorance
that sought to crush them,
through diseases that seek to destroy them,
they live.
They live so my brothers, cousins,
parents, aunts and uncles
can learn from them,
so the wisdom they have
can help us live our lives with wisdom.
I know the wisdom they share is authentic
because extraordinary people
have extraordinary problems.
Never Again
We were ridiculed and we were scorned.
When the Jews walked in the streets
others would frown.
But we would not fall down
and we wouldn’t turn around.
Mud was flung and rocks were thrown,
bullets were fired,
men were hung,
and children were burned.
But we still stood strong
and we proved all of them wrong.
When all was dark
and we had not a spark,
we refused to lose our faith
and we wouldn’t give up our hope.
The Nazis stole our freedom,
and Hitler mocked our people.
But we kept our dignity
and knew that someday we’d be free.
While the world debated
the existence of Nazi death camps,
the Jews fought for their lives.
Millions and millions perished
when they met Zyklon-B gas in the shower.
What the world forgot
for those painful years,
we remembered.
we will never forget.
My children will know
that they were alive
because of Bubies and Zaides
that survived.
I will never forget.
I will take the wisdom
that I’ve been given
and share it.
I will bring peace to my part of the world.
when one little boy in Israel dies,
I will die with him.
If that wretched flame of anti-Semitism
is ever again lit
I will be among the first
to stomp it out.
This world must be one of love.
