Love at the Time of Holocaust (Satis Shroff)

Mulhouse: A Young Love (Satis Shroff)

 ( Stolpersteine in Freiburg's cobbled streets as a reminder of the past)

Ach, what a life it has been,

Having to escape,

The state-run

Mass-slaughter,

Not of cows, pigs and chicken,

But of humans,

Who’s only fault was

To be born a Jew

In Germany.

My name was Hanna,

A short form of Johanna:

Hanna, the gifted.

My Dad was a Jewish merchant.

In the Schwarzwald town of Freiburg.

I had to give up my name,

For it was of Teutonic origin.

That was in 1938.

Do you remember harbour at Marseille?

There you were Roland,

My Alsatian love.

When I think that my dad,

Joined the war effort in 1914,

Swore to fight for the Kaiser

And Fatherland.

Where was the justice on earth?

We had to emigrate to Mulhouse,

To France in 1938.

My Dad’s business

Was confiscated by so-called Aryans

In brown-shirts and black boots.

The house at the Freiburger Poststrasse

Was sold.

The Emigration Tax swallowed the money,

We were left with nothing.

Ah, in Mulhouse I met you.

You a Catholic and I,

A Jew.

Mulhouse soon became unsafe,

When the Nazis declared War.

I bade you faewwell in Marseille,

On my way to Casablanca,

Then to Cuba.

Do you remember we pledged

To one another:

‘J’attendrai.’

I carried your picture in my wallet,

In all the years.

We arrived in New York in 1943,

I married in 1947,

Had two children.

Years later I discovered

That you’d survived the War,

Written letters to me,

Sent telegrams,

All withheld

By my self-righteous Dad.

It was my precious daughter Leslie,

Who contacted your sister.

She gave her the album,

I’d given to you,

As a parting present.

You were over 70 then, Roland:

A successful man in Montreal.

Do you remember how we met,

After all those calls

From NY to Montreal?

We were separated in 1942.

I knew this wasn’t Casablanca.

Somewhere deep in my heart,

I believed we’d see each other again.

And life a miracle we met in 1991.

49 years later.

Ah, we were a couple again,

Reliving our past happiness,

Revisiting the places

Where we grew up.

We forgot about the long separation,

Time healed our wounds.

We’re still so much in love.

A young love,

Ripened with age,

Like in a fairy tale,

Despite all the perils.

* * *

This poem is based on “Cross the Borders of Time” written by Leslie Maitland, and is about her Mom Hanna Günzburger, who was the daughter of a Jewish iron-merchant in Freiburg. The book is available on www.amazon.com. It was first printed by ‘Other Press.’ If you visit Freiburg, look for the stolpersteine, scattered in Freiburg’s cobbled streets. You read not only the names of Alice and Sigmar Günzburger near their former residence at the Poststrasse, but scores of other Jewish families also who were gassed by the Nazis during the Third Reich.