My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto

1.

"Was grandma at Warsaw?" he asks.
"No, they lived in Prague," my wife says
"No ghetto there, but Jews
were relocated, moved
from their homes to make way
for German soldiers.
Grandma and her mother lived
with another family,
the Lechners. Then they were sent
to Terezin."

2.

"What did ZOB stand for?" Adam
wants to know,
his a common name now
shared by several boys
at school. "Do you
have a sister
named Eve?" they sometimes
tease, Eva, my mother's
name, who survived the camps
Adam firstborn survivor
grandchild of my family,
American born
how the name resonates
for us, Adam
man of clay.

3.

We read about the April 19th
Aktion, how two thousand
S.S. troops, heavily armed
entered the central ghetto,
how ZOB units
armed with incendiary
bottles blew up tanks
held off relief
troops, fought all day
and drove the Germans
back, two hundred
dead and wounded
on the streets of Warsaw
where so much Jewish blood
and tears had flowed

how that night, first seder
of Pasach
people wept as the rabbi
read the Haggada:
"Pour out thy wrath, O Lord. . . ."

and how, next day red-
and-white Polish
flag flew side
by side with Jewish
blue-and-white, morale high

"We shall fight
to the last"

against artillery and fire
in flame and smoke
thousands burned alive
fighting with almost no terrain
left to defend
holding out, resisting
day by day longer
than hope, until surrounded
on the 8th of May
they took their own lives
just like Masada
dying in a pail
of smoke and ashes, the great
Warsaw synagogue
burning, the ghetto one huge
crematorium.

4.

Late March wind
sweeps through leafless oaks.
So quiet here, a neighbor's
car, occasionally the Burlington
Northern rumbles along the river
past Sauk Rapids.

The synagogue at Warsaw, ashes
and all the dead.
How heavy history
weighs on his shoulders,
hangs like David's star
from his long
and slender neck.