Marked: Poems of the Holocaust by Stephen Herz is probably one of the best poetic introductions to the Holocaust. In language that is clear and resonant, Herz tells us what we need to know in images and lines that we will not soon forget.
Here are two poems from the collection (“Morgen Früh” and “Whatever You Can Carry”) and several stanzas from “Shot,” followed by an interview with Mr. Herz regarding Marked, its genesis and intentions.
POEMS
Morgen Früh
Do you know how one says never in camp slang? Morgen früh: tomorrow morning.
—Primo Levi
Will you wake on a plank of wood with six others, wash your face in your morning coffee, and go to work in the mud?
Tomorrow morning. Will you go to the latrine when they tell you, or be shot at roll call because you did it in your pants?
Tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow morning the boils and pus and lice will be gone, the blue tattoo will fade from your wrist, the green dye will fade from your eyes, the sweet singed smell will fade from your nostrils.
Tomorrow morning they’ll give you back your ovaries, give you back your children, give you back your old wool coat with the yellow star, and you’ll give them back the paper cement bag stuffed under your dress.
Tomorrow morning you’ll run a comb through your long black hair, tie it with a bright red ribbon, and someone will smile and say: Good morning, Lena.
Tomorrow morning there will be no more ashes to fill the swamp, to dump in the river, to fertilize the fields. No more ashes to spread on the paths like gravel under the boots of the SS.
Tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow morning.
—Morgen Früh.
Whatever You Can Carry
Twenty-nine storerooms were burned before theliberation of Auschwitz.
In the six that remained they discovered 348,820 men’ssuits, 836,255 women’s coats, more than seven tons of human hair andeven 13,964 carpets.
—Michael Berenbaum: The World Must Know
“You will work in the factory, work in the fields, you will be resettled in the East, bring whatever you can carry.”
So our dresses, shirts, suits, underwear, bedsheets, featherbeds, pillows, tablecloths, towels, we carried.
We carried our hairbrushes, handbrushes, toothbrushes, shoe daubers, scissors, mirrors, safety razors. Forks, spoons, knives, pots, saucepans, tea strainers, potato peelers, can openers we carried.
We carried umbrellas, sunglasses, soap, toothpaste, shoe polish. We carried our photographs.
We carried milk powder, talc, baby food.
We carried our sewing machines. We carried rugs, medical instruments, the baby’s pram.
Jewelry we carried, sewn in our shoes, sewn in our corsets, hidden in our bodies.
We carried loaves of bread, bottles of wine,,schnapps, cocoa, chocolate, jars of marmalade,,cans of fish. Wigs, prayer shawls, tiny Torahs, skullcaps, phylacteries we carried.
Warm winter coats in the heat of summer we carried. On our coats, our suits, our dresses, we carried our yellow stars.
On our baggage in bold letters, our addresses, our names we carried.
We carried our lives.
Shot (excerpt)
shot in the synagogue
shot up against the wall in the headlights of the truck
shot in the farmyard by the dung heap
shot in the hospital, the maternity ward
shot in the city, the town, the shtetl
shot in their houses, in the streets, in the market square
shot in the cemetery
shot in the warehouse after machine-gun muzzles were pushed through holes in the walls
shot in the roundups trying to escape
shot in bed
shot in their cribs
shot in the air, the baby thrown over its mother’s head
shot because they stole a potato
shot because they were betrayed for a kilo of sugar
shot because they weren’t wearing the yellow star
shot because they were wearing the yellow star
shot by the Einsatzgruppen
shot by the Reserve Battalion of the German Order Police
shot by the Gestapo Firing Squad
shot by the Waffen SS and the Higher SS
shot by the Hiwis-Ukrainian, Latvian, and Lithuanian volunteers
shot by the Hungarian Fascist Nyilas, the Arrow Cross
shot by the Polish police and Polish partisans
shot by the Croatian Ustasa
shot by the Romanian army, police, gendarmerie, border guard, civilians, and the Iron Guard
shot by the Wehrmacht
shot by old men in the German Home Guard
shot by young boys in the Hitler Youth
shot in Aktion after Aktion as if it was “more or less our daily bread”
shot in the search-and-destroy mission, the Jew Hunt
shot in the “harvest festival,” the Erntefest
shot in order to make the northern Lublin district judenrein
shot in Zhitomir, Poniatowa, Józefów, Trawniki
shot in Lomazy, Parczew, Bialystok, Kharkov
shot in Bialowieza, Luków, Riga, Poltava
shot in Międzyrzec, Khorol, Kremenstshug
shot in Slutsk, Bobruisk, Mogilev, Vinnitsa
shot in Odessa, Lvov, Kolmyja, Minsk, Rovno
shot in Majdanek and Brest-Litovsk
shot in Neu Sandau and Tarnopol and Rohatin
shot in Dnepropetrovsk
shot in Kovno, Pinsk, Berdichev, Tarnówshot in Kamenets-Podolski
shot in Krakow, Szczebrzeszyn, Siauliai
shot in Stolin, Kielce, Lutsk, Serokomla
shot in Drogobych, Luga, Delatyn
shot in the Warsaw Ghetto
shot in the ravine of Babi Yar
shot in Bilgoraj, Nadvornaya, Stanislawów
shot in David Grodek, Janów Podlesia
shot near Zamosc
S. J. Tagliareni 