Primo Levi translation of the Holocaust poem "Shema" ("Listen")

Shema ("Listen")
by Primo Levi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You who live secure
in your comfortable homes,
who return each evening to find
warm food and a hearty welcome ...

Consider: is this a "man"
who slogs through the mud,
who knows no peace,
who fights for scraps of bread,
who lives at another man's whim,
at his "yes" or his "no" lies dead?

Consider: is this is a "woman"
shorn bald and bereft of a name
because she lacks the strength to remember,
her eyes as void and her womb as frigid
as a winter frog's?

Consider that such horrors have indeed been!

I commend these words to you.
Engrave them in your hearts
when you lounge in your beds
and again when you rise,
when you venture outside. 

Repeat them to your children,
or may your houses softly crumble
and disease render you equally as humble
so that even your offspring avert their eyes.

Primo Michele Levi [1919-1987] was an Italian Jewish chemist, scientist, Holocaust survivor, writer, journalist and poet. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems. He is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. His unique work The Periodic Table was shortlisted as one of the greatest scientific books ever written, by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Levi's autobiographical book about his liberation from Auschwitz, The Truce, became a movie with the same name in 1997. 

Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, Italian, translation, man, mud, woman, bald, nameless, houses, homes, bread, eyes, womb, empty, void, frigid, lifeless, horror, horrors, hearts, write, etch, engrave, inscribe, children, offspring, disease, avert, reject

Franta Bass: The Little Boy With His Hands Up

Frantisek “Franta” Bass was a Jewish boy born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1930. When he was just eleven years old, his family was deported by the Nazis to Terezin, where the SS had created a hybrid Ghetto/Concentration Camp just north of Prague (it was also known as Theresienstadt). Franta was one of many little boys and girls who lived there under terrible conditions for three years. He was then sent to Auschwitz, where on October 28th, 1944, he was murdered at age fourteen.

The Garden
by Franta Bass
translation by Michael R. Burch

A small garden,
so fragrant and full of roses!
The path the little boy takes
is guarded by thorns.

A small boy, a sweet boy,
growing like those budding blossoms!
But when the blossoms have bloomed,
the boy will be no more.

Jewish Forever
by Franta Bass
translation by Michael R. Burch

I am a Jew and always will be, forever!
Even if I should starve,
I will never submit!

But I will always fight for my people,
with my honor,
to their credit!

And I will never be ashamed of them;
this is my vow.
I am so very proud of my people now!

How dignified they are, in their grief!
And though I may die, oppressed,
still I will always return to life ...

Cleansings

by Michael R. Burch

Walk here among the walking specters. Learn

inhuman patience. Flesh can only cleave

to bone this tightly if their hearts believe

that G-d is good, and never mind the Urn.

A lentil and a bean might plump their skin

with mothers’ bounteous, soft-dimpled fat

(and call it “health”), might quickly build again

the muscles of dead menfolk. Dream, like that,

and call it courage. Cry, and be deceived,

and so endure.

                         Or burn, made wholly pure.

One’s prayer is answered,

                                          “god” thus unbelieved.

No holy pyre this: death’s hissing chamber.

Two thousand years ago, a starlit manger,

weird Herod’s cries for vengeance on the meek,

the children slaughtered. Fear, when angels speak,

the prophesies of man.

                                    Do what you can,

not what you must, or should.

                                                They call you “good,”

dead eyes devoid of tears; how shall they speak

except in blankness? Fear, then, how they weep.

Escape the gentle clutching stickfolk. Creep

away in shame to retch and flush away

your vomit from their ashes. Learn to pray.