Sonderkommando

1.
They chose me because I was strong, as my father
Was before me.
Since I was fifteen I'd spent my summers
Loading crates at his kosher meat packaging plant--

The largest in Germany.

The wealth of my father and the love

Of my mother made me strong.

The work put that strength to practice.

Now I spend my days lifting the bodies

Of the weak and unpracticed to their graves.

Children I carry like sacks of grain

Over my shoulder, thin young women

With graceful limbs,

And feeble old men with grainy skin and

Long white beards.

These soulless forms now consume my soul.

It used to be that we sent the bodies

To the crematorium.

Over a thousand bodies a day could be disintegrated

In these fiery chambers,

But that is no longer enough.

Now the bodies are burned on pyres,

Hundreds at a time.

The officers festively gather round

To watch these burnings,

Drinking greedily from bottles of wine,

Laughing jokingly, warming their hands

On the fire.

We too watch as long as we can

Until the officers order us back

To work.

We watch the flames consume the bodies,

Often with faces familiar to us,

And consider how the fire has long since

Gone out in our own souls,

Consider how our flesh seems also

To have long ago burned away,

The well of our tears dried up.

In truth, we are nothing but bones.

2.

When I was young I was blindly proud

To be a Jew.

I taught my gentile friends Yiddish words

And shared my father's phylacteries for show and tell.

My mother worried, but my father assured her

All was well.

Some are victimized for that which is arbitrary

And some for that which is innate,

But it is through victimization that

The arbitrary becomes innate.

And such it was with my Judaism.

I was not a true Jew until the first stone hit my face...

I was leaving school late, as I

Always did, having stayed for extra help,

And the boys, all of whom

Had once been my friends,

Had waited for me in ambush.

"Get the Christ killer!" they shouted,

Throwing stones. I was certain

They did not see the irony in this,

So instead of pleading my case, I ran.

I ran with fear, yes, but mostly

With anger as my fuel--anger towards

The boys who chased me, anger

At myself, and anger at

The Jews.

The Jews who tried to immerse

Themselves in a society that would never embrace them

No matter how much of their past they denied,

Who preached tolerance and understanding,

When neither existed for them.

I seemed to harden with each stride,

My blood more vile with each beat of my heart.

At a main thoroughfare, I crossed the road,

Hoping to waylay my pursuers.

Glancing over my shoulder I saw them

Aiming at me from the sidewalk,

But I didn't see the black Mercedes

As it rammed into me and sent

Me flying into the pavement.

"Let's get out of here! Go!" I heard

The boys yell.

Dazed, I sat up and saw them fleeing

And then, as one is awakened by a bell on Sunday morning,

I heard the clear, beautiful voice of a woman

Asking me if I was OK.

Looking up, I saw a woman just past

Her prime in looks, whose eyes were subdued not by

Excess of life, but by wisdom,

And whose beautiful, sensuous mouth

Was serious--perched with concern.

Having assured her that I was fine, she

Helped me up and offered me a ride.

Then she noticed the bruise on my face.

"Those boys were throwing stones at you," she said.

I nodded and she asked me why.

(Had she not looked so much like my mother,

I may have lied.)

When I told her, her features collapsed

Then hardened with the surety of pain.

A car behind us honked,

So we got in her car and drove away.

She said she wanted to show me something

Before she drove me home.

She took me to her home--

A sixteenth century mansion on the outskirts

Of town. She showed me room

After immaculate room, every wall covered

With paintings her grandfather, a Jew, had painted.

His name was Abraham Schulman.

He married Gretta Scheinman, a poor gentile,

And she converted. He saw to it

That she was surrounded by books

And high culture.

One day, Abraham was leaving a lecture

On Mendel and Jewish philosophy

When he was stabbed and killed by extremists.

"Jews have had to work twice as hard," she said,

"And will continue to. For you see,

In order for us to survive,

We must thrive."

3.

Her body was light,

But it seemed a heavy burden to carry

And place upon the wooden pyre.

As the fire spread, I watched her face,

Disquieted, permanently baffled.

The words of a prayer lay somewhere

In the back of my throat,

But it would not come forth.

Instead it wrapped itself around my heart,

Protecting it, and keeping it a little more distant

From the world.