So beautiful: "Shemà" by Primo Levi

Came across this poem while going through a book I have out from the library [100 Poems to Break Your Heart by Edward Hirsch, ISBN: 978-0-544-93188]. The Shemà is a Jewish prayer recited first thing when getting out of bed in the morning after waking and before retiring to bed before sleep. He took the name of that prayer as the title for his poem. The word Shemà means 'Listen' or 'Hear'. Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, wrote this in 1946 after surviving the hardships of Auschwitz. In my Holocaust Studies class, we read his book, If Not Now, When? This is translated from the original Italian. Here it is in the original language, as taken from WeSchool:

Testo di Shemà
Voi che vivete sicuri
nelle vostre tiepide case,
voi che trovate tornando a sera
il cibo caldo e visi amici:
considerate se questo è un uomo
che lavora nel fango
che non conosce pace
che lotta per mezzo pane
che muore per un sì o per un no.
Considerate se questa è una donna,
senza capelli e senza nome
senza più forza di ricordare
vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo
come una rana d'inverno.

Meditate che questo è stato:
vi comando queste parole.
Scolpitele nel vostro cuore
stando in casa e andando per via,
coricandovi alzandovi;
ripetetele ai vostri figli
O vi si sfaccia la casa,
la malattia vi impedisca,
i vostri nati torcano il viso da voi.

What???

The Netherlands Spied on Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Considering Them a Danger to Democracy

Preserve. Remember. Never Let It Happen Again.

'Ravages of time' leave Auschwitz decaying: Global campaign seeks to raise $165 million to create 'perpetual fund' to allow repairs

The red brick barracks that housed starving inmates are sinking into ruin. Time has warped victims' leather shoes into strange shapes. Hair sheared to make cloth is slowly turning to dust.

Auschwitz is crumbling — the world's most powerful and important testament to Nazi Germany's crimes falling victim to age and mass tourism. Now guardians of the memorial site are waging an urgent effort to save what they can before it is too late.

There is no other place on this earth where the chilling crimes of the Nazis and their 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Problem' can be seen so plainly. Auschwitz is forever burned into the memories of those who endured it. For many Jews, it is a place where family members died and were buried or cremated, and while not holy, should be respected as a place of the dead. But even more so, for the rest of us, it is a reminder that we can never let this happen again, that the massive wholesale and orderly efficiency with which so many people were murdered is still a form of butchery. It is a bastion against those who would deny its existence, and that of the Holocaust itself. It is an opportunity to teach new generations of the horror that can come when ordinary people do extraordinarily evil (and to be fair, in some cases heroic things). It should not be allowed to crumble to dust, but rather be preserved for the present, and for the future, with the hope that this will never happen again.

Says museum director Piotr Cywinski:

"There are no more remains of Treblinka, Kulmhof, Sobibor and Belzec," Cywinski said, referring to extermination camps that the Nazis destroyed in an effort to hide their crimes. "Let us not allow the biggest of these death camps — and the only one that is still recognizable — to fall into decay due to the ravages of time and our indifference."

Good

Three plead guilty to Auschwitz sign theft

Three men have pleaded guilty to the theft of the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the Auschwitz death camp, Polish prosecutors have said.

Under a plea bargain, the men - two Poles and a Swede - accepted prison terms of between 28 and 32 months.

The sign was recovered cut into three pieces three days after its theft in December last year.

Of the six million people, mostly Jews, murdered in the Nazi Holocaust, one million were killed at Auschwitz.

Three other Poles were convicted already for stealing the sign. The Swede, who was originally thought to be the mastermind is supposed to have neo-Nazi connexions. However, authorities believe a second Swede, unknown to them, was actually behind the plot. The sign was stolen and divided into in three pieces but recovered and restored.

Remember forever

Survivors mark liberation of Auschwitz: Prisoners at the Nazi death camp were freed by the Red Army in 1945

"We have a sacred duty to remember the twisted thinking that led here — how a great society of culture and science succumbed to the worst instincts of man and rationalized mass murder and one of the most barbaric acts in history," [President Barack] Obama said

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, set on this date because 65 years ago the infamous Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps were liberated by the Russians.

All of us--Jews, non-Jews, people of whatever colour, religion, and nationality, should remember the genocide that took place there. As Obama said, this great crime was perpetrated by one of the most cultured societies at the time. Genocide can develop anywhere that there is intolerance, distrust, and hatred for a group based on some innate characteristic. The dehumanisation of Jews, Romany, and other groups was a horrific stain on the human collective soul. Those who deny that it happened are blind to history, to memory, to the existence of these very survivors who bear testament to what happened during that very dark time. Please, teach your children tolerance, treat your fellows humanely, and remember that even in the evil that was perpetrated those decades ago, there were people who sought to save the Jews, who risked their lives to stand up to the Nazi ideology, and who did what was right and good. These righteous Gentiles, as they are known in Israel, remind us that even when evil seems to reign, good is not extinguished. Someday you may have the choice between defiance and complicity--please choose wisely.

Indeed

Viewpoint: Why the Auschwitz sign is irreplaceable by Rabbi Andrew Baker.

There can be no copies or reproductions; visitors must see only what was real. In that way they will be bear witness to the very objects and structures which in turn remain the mute eyewitness to what happened there.

Perhaps that is what makes the theft of this sign so shocking and essentially irreplaceable. Auschwitz is surely the very antithesis of a cathedral - not a spiritual temple evoking heaven but a hellish factory of death.

Yet, in this opposite universe those scrolled letters were its altarpiece, and its theft a desecration.

???

Someone has stolen the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign from the gateway to Auschwitz. This is a tangible piece of history and hopefully it will be returned quickly to the site.

Brilliant

A post by Warren Ellis shared by David Rothman in Google Reader brought this very powerful and moving speaker back to mind. This is from Jacob Bronowski's 'Ascent of Man' (there's a few moments of silence before the speaking begins):



According to Ellis, Bronowski once wrote: “It has been one of the most destructive modern prejudices that art and science are different and somehow incompatible interests.”

I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you both for sharing.

Isn't it sad

that someone could have survived the horrors of Auschwitz--allegedly having been in line for the gas chambers four times, gone to a new country and achieved success as a discotheque owner, and then be beaten and strangled to death at the age of 89 by apparently stupid [in terms of how easily they were traced] robbers motivated by greed?



A Murder Victim Found in His Bed Had a Colorful Past
Bronx woman arrested in murder of high-profile Holocaust survivor Guido Felix Brinkmann
Two brothers arrested in murder of Holocaust survivor Felix Brinkmann

Making important history accessible

Holocaust recordings put online by British Library-- Audio recordings made by Jewish survivors of the Second World War go on the British Library's website from today to mark National Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27th).

The recordings can be found at http://sounds.bl.uk

On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp, was liberated.