A Survivors Tale - Poem

As we get close to the festival of Pesach, I would like to share with you a poem I wrote about the Holocaust. Before I begin, however, I wish to say, that I know this is a sensitive topic, yet it is also an important one to discuss, especially around this time of year.

On Pesach, we celebrate our freedom from being slaves in Egypt. We celebrate the knowledge that Hashem took us as his nation and showed the world his hand. We celebrate being able to live with the knowledge that Hashem did not and would not ever abandon us, His nation.

The Holocaust was, for all the many names people give it, the Jewish People's modern day Egypt. Being forced into slave labour, backbreaking and painful, the world around us seemed a shadow of the villages, shtetles, and communities that it once was.

Six million died. Only a few survived.

Yet, those few that survived... Had the courage to build themselves up again... to help rebuild a lost world.

I hope you enjoy this poem,

Yitzy Schweitzer

A Survivors Tale - Poem
I am sitting with my grandson,
On a fine spring day,
When he notices the numbers on my arm.
He asks me,
"Grandpa, what significance are they?
What do they mean to you?"

I sit back, and I can still see it,
As clear as it was then,
Even though it happened, oh so many years ago.
I look at my grandson,
And my eyes fill with tears,
I tell him "My child, here is what these numbers mean".

I tell of the village,
Where I used to live,
A happy, young child was I.
I tell him of the butcher,
The baker, and the rabbi,
And I tell him about how I lived my life.

I tell him about the day,
When we were taken away,
I tell him of the terror, of the nightmare, that we all knew.
I tell him how scared we were, but yet, we believed,
We held on to parents hands,
As the village, we began to leave.

All those sleepless, cold nights,
When I was so hungry,
I wondered how would I make it through.
But my belief in the Aibishter,
In my father above,
Gave me the courage, to do what I must do.

After we were freed,
Although there was excitement,
There was pain,
Of knowing what was left behind.

So many had suffered, 
So many had lost,
But we knew we had survived.

We had risen from the ash,
Of a fire so horrible,
We were the ones who would rebuild what was lost.
And now, all these years later,
As I look at my grandson,
I see my part of the world,
That I helped to rebuild.