Mickey Kantor-Ponar
Ponar – Written by Mickey Kantor 8th April, 2013
Dear people, a cold sky, frozen grounds, a holy place.
Let us stop here for a moment and listen together, to the silence.
Look around at the green trees in the forest, to the ebony darkness between them.
Listen to the tremor of the silence of this profane, holy place….
Just another moment…
Here they suddenly appear, popping up instantly one by one, dozens, hundreds of thousands of shadows.
There they are, bleary-eyed, covered in sand and darkness, still wearing the festive clothes that were torn from their bodies.
They abandoned their bodies, their last vestiges of respect, to the freezing cold, pursued by barking dogs and the shriek of murderous bullets.
And the repetitive click of the train wheels dements the rate of the heartbeats of the saintly crowd.
Open your eyes wide for a moment and see line after line of thousands of children and beautiful young babies. They are stooped with the burden of the past seventy years…
Their small hearts struggle for one more breath of air from the forest in which we now stand, here, in Ponar, Their last breaths before they close their eyes with the next round of gunfire.
Mummy, they whisper fearfully, your beloved body makes it difficult for me to breathe, your blood gets into my eyes and a frightening darkness crawls into the chambers of my heart.
Where is Daddy, Mummy? I am afraid of the sound of gunfire, so frightened to be left here alone.
Mummy…..
Let your hearts listen to the screaming silence, which continues to echo in a veil after the clapping wings of the birds in the forest as they flee this domain of death.
Open your eyes and look – seventy years later, the clods of earth that were thrown over the beloved, precious holy souls continue to quiver.
Life stopped at once, nevertheless, they surely move…
Mummy dear, how? I am seventy years old and you are still not here. Daddy has gone to work but you promised that he would return when the moon rose..
Mummy, seventy years have passed, the world has warmed up and I am still waiting here, on this frozen ground, still believing that everything will be alright, as you whispered to me that morning.
The Vilna Ghetto was liquidated seventy years ago and I still await the warmth of your hand that froze on my shoulder, the goodnight hug from Daddy who has not returned, the pleasant smile of Grandma and Grandpa who disappeared, playing with my friends, school, the routine.
Seventy years have passed and I can't stop clinging, recalling, wanting to remember and not to forget.
Dear people, black sky, frozen ground. Tell me that you also see the images, that you also hear the voices.
Make a promise to yourselves and the whole world, to learn the lesson and to teach it, to remember the pictures and to recall them. And never, ever to forget.
I am cold, Mummy…
The March of the Living –Ponar, April 2012 by Mickey Kantor
A small railway station, near a little village,
at the edge of the forest.
A small group of people dressed in blue.
Waiting.
Dozens of different-sized blue and white flags and one enormous poster are waving in the icy sunny wind.
The click of the wheels of a passing train
Shatters the virility of the nearby forest.
Black business vehicles
Burst forth uneasily between the trees.
One by one, like a flock of ravens, haughty figures wearing black business suits,
Burst forth, uneasily, from behind the trees.
An absurd scene, here and now,
In the open peep holes among the spaces,
Among the links in the chain of history
Forever and a day….
A gray bus emits dozens of children and youth from its belly
And the crowd of people increases on all sides.
A medley of languages floats silently and seriously among them:
Yiddish, Hebrew, English, German, Russian, Polish and Lithuanian.
A unique category of forced attendance at this special occasion…
An organized mixture of cultures, motives, ages, goals, positions, attitudes….
Historical approaches, primeval perspectives, political outlooks, world views….
A single voice penetrates into the variegated atmosphere:
"The March of the Living Ponar 2012 –get ready, we are on our way!"
And this human phalanx, that has come from the ends of the earth
As one, walking towards the gray asphalt path
To the end of the track, parallel to the railway lines
Towards the realm of death…
They move together.
Following the last march of tens of thousands of human beings
Who trod here under coercion to the abyss of destruction.
They were deceived, they collapsed, they were stripped bare
Under the weight of the depressing skies of a treacherous motherland.
They were headed to a place where the concept of "a G-d forsaken place" was truly significant.
A big, black dog barks behind a rickety gate.
Soft rays of the sun peek out from behind colorless clouds.
The repeated clatter of dozens of train carriages
The sound of feet of the young and the old
And wave after wave of blue-and-white flags
All directed towards the gaping hole behind the gates of the compound.
They are swallowed, one by one, by the darkness of the forest
The secrets of Ponar
Are engraved there.
They are exposed there in the flesh of every tree, in the heart, soul and body of the nation
And they can never be removed.
Silence.
Words. Prayers. Names. Strangers. Memorial candles.
The tooting of the last train, engulfed, shamed in a massive cacophony of sounds.
The yearning heart sings "Hatikvah".
This is the victory of the legacy, the hope, the yearning soul, the faith in the struggle for what is appropriate, what is sane, what is expected and what is possible.
As long as the heart continues beating, we move forward hopefully.
Mummy has gone to the Sho'ah, March 2011
"Mummy, today you went to the Sho'ah again.."
"What is there for you at the Sho'ah?"
"My Shoa'h is attached to me from the day I was born,
My little girl.
Stuck to my neck like a long, long plait
Wherever I go, it casts its shadow on my back,
My daughter.
Mocking the weak sun of the fall
Clinging to the palm fronds in the courtyard,
As it crosses my face
Its thick, heavy shadow is somewhat comforting.
"Being the second generation is somehow stronger than me,"
My darling son.
The sensation that doesn't leave me, the obligation of my peers
It bleeds from the depths of my soul, from my earliest memory
During the crazed sleep at night.
My son.
Even then, small and large tears flowed….
Creeping in the darkness, they seeped into my room.
The white sheets, starched with the strong smell of refreshing cleanliness
Mingled with the aromas of the wind and wildflowers from the back yard
Could not withstand it.
I lie in my bed, night after night, listening
And they are in the next room, embraced
Clinging to one another in their sooty, shamefaced shadow
Bonded by eternal hope for comfort for the pain
Of a childhood, torn from their broken wings,
In tortuous pain, feather after feather.
The hugs from my parents and grandparents,
The home full of warmth
The green garden of trees
Childhood, dreams…
Never to return…
The blood of their trampled childhood was drawn with a shriek
Flooding the chambers of my heart with its black thickness
Chamber after chamber, corridor after corridor
And the attic, with its crushed floor, is also flooded.
I can picture her – a little girl
Running barefoot, very anxious
Her voice strangled in the blackness
Unheard…
In her motherland Vilna, no earth is left
The flower on the windowsill is no longer there
The grandfather clock and the cat on the window ledge
Have silently slipped away through the tattered curtain
They blew away silently, further and further
They wandered to drain a severed childhood
In another, perhaps, loving country….
Maybe a different one…
I close my eyes tight
In a pose of calm acceptance
Trying to contain my overburdened self,
To store breaths, sighs and faded butterfly wings
Wrapped in a gown of light and serenity
My eyes staring at the wings of time that stretch to the morrow
I am flying to find the other story…
When I am there, at the "Sho'ah", my beloved children,
I meet my mother's daughter
"Lay down your head," she says
And I do so …
Only then will I hear a lullaby
Sung in Lithuanian and Yiddish
Its fragrance will melt into my soul
And mother's hands, then and now
Will touch – won't touch
Today, tomorrow and later
And I feel good, with her, with myself…
Perhaps one day
When I have no more words
When the colors no longer talk between my fingers
And the page remains white, empty while I remain breathless
All your questions will suddenly unravel
And vanish into the gloom within you.
A great light will penetrate within you
To the depths of forgetfulness
It will grasp and encase the palm fronds in the yard
It will caress your understanding, my children
With bare, soft and loving hands
It will guide you one by one
Into a placid position, with outstretched arms
Between the domains of the living and the dead
Equally distant from one another…
And then –like a morning breeze in the spring,
The fresh fragrance of the wind and the wild flowers
Will emerge from somewhere
With unknowable strength,
Revelation, understanding and acceptance
For your mother who "went to the Sho'ah"…..
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