War Cries

By Kerry Arquette

The devastation caused by World War II is described by historians in terms of military strategies and battles, the toll on economics, and the numbers of dead. But only the stories of those whose lives were changed or lost, can convey the true horror of the war. These were people very much like ourselves—men, women, children, siblings, poets, soldiers, students, professionals, laborers, givers, takers, jokers, dancers, lovers, dreamers, cowards and brave. Each is the hero of his own tale. Each tale underscores the uniqueness of human perception based upon personality and circumstances.

By listening to the voices of those with stories to tell, we can grow in our appreciation of what it means to be human.

WAR CRIES: UNHEARD STORIES, UNMARKED GRAVES provides a stage for the voices—many inspired by people present in Europe during World War II—to speak their truths.

The characters behind the poems come from different religions, different professions, and different ideologies.Like all of us, they want to be heard. They want to be understood. Most of all...they want to be remembered.

As long as I reside in their minds and hearts, I will never truly be gone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Books
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370588282

Book preview

War Cries

Unheard Voices, Unmarked Graves

Kerry Arquette

Open Books

Published by Open Books

Copyright © 2016 by Kerry Arquette

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover image Copyright © 2016 by Kerry Arquette

In memory of those lost.

We are listening.

Dedicated to the Voices who were brave enough to step forward and who trusted me to tell their stories.

Fanny Mina Grotz

There is a place a world away

Where a man may journey after his toils are through.

Without the weight of guilt, or blame, or passion, or pain,

His soul rises like a leaf born on the gentlest breeze.

And as the earth falls below, the air becomes clean and clear.

Sounds fade to the whirr of a hummingbird's wings.

Odors of life and death dilute, then disappear.

From this ethereal tower that dwarfs the tallest mountain peaks,

One can view the enormous mosaic of mankind—

From time's conception to the clock's most recent tick.

A man may find his soul space in this scheme,

Gaining perspective on his contribution to the rich and riotous whole.

And then he will know if his life has been well-lived or wasted,

And whether, in the end, he was hero or villain.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fanny Mina Grotz

Setting The Stage

Elie Goldberg

Ester Kaplan

Rachel Stanz

Judah Birkowitz

Rivka Krylov

Kliment Yosselevscka

Sarah Anielewicz

Jack Fajnzilber

Joshua Mahrer

Louise Mahrer

Vera Zukoski

Sonya Reichman

Noah Kotmel

Odo Wilhelm

Grietje Kuilema

Lilly Rienks

Sonya Griendling

Kurt Smolitz

Victoria Czastkiewicz

Klaus Sichrovsky

Niklas Renke

Johanna Stine

Gerbert Ludwig

Herta Kaufmann

Jan Kowolski

Eva Wilenski

Baby Wilenski

Astana Kovalov

Sonja Rosenberg

Resi Hoffmeir

Elizabeth Stern

Unknown

Andre Petit

Justified

Marina Tereshkova

Lola Krantz

Adele Opfer

Lidia Klimenko

Leoind Gerbrandt

Golly Sussman

The Never-To-Be Born

Seymour Poppanick

Johann Goldschmitt

Renee Robota

Werner Mueller

Hans Feldman

Jacob Baruch

Bessie Katz

Irony

Gossip Mill

Stasi Oppenheiner

Corporal Thomas Smyth

Timothy Robbins

Hannah Deutchman

Christine Soloman

Ivan Romarov

Valeriy Romarov

Bernard Zahlerova

Zarko Jenische

Esmerelda Jenische

Hilda Wolf

Eero Kauranen

Kesar Radogost

Gustav Moller

Thomas Jensen

Hana Voigt

Chaya Shulamit

Rosa Dekel

Elsbeth Dekel

Hana Rosenmayer

Karoline Rosenmayer

Alessandro D'Addezio

Violette Stein

Lia Kumosa

Natan Kumosa

Tsila Kumosa

Saul Markiewicz

Juta Benicoeur

Itzik Falk

Fela Daum

Elka Dajbog

Margherita Petacci

Edda Vittorio

Mirek Sectevy

Traugott Middlestadt

Chorus

Sources

Acknowledgements

Setting The Stage

Germany after WWI was a country in crisis. The harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles triggered a free fall in the value of the deutschmark and led to widespread shortages of staple goods, including food and fuel. Germany's post-war government—the Weimar Republic—foundered, enacting weak and ineffective legislation that failed to check the hyperinflation or address the people's physical and psychological needs. Defeated, demoralized, and despairing, the German people began to turn away from the government and seek out groups with harsher leaders, those who offered a clear message: German strength, solidarity, and a rejection of non-German peoples that would return the country to prosperity and dominance.

Despite the government's efforts to check the rising extremism, opposition groups flourished, attracting hundreds of thousands of adherents. Of these, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party) became the most well-known. Colloquially, Germans called the party Nationalsozialismus or National Socialism; in English, it has a different name: The Nazi Party.

Using brutal tactics against opponents and espousing a message of Aryan purity, the Party—and its charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler—rapidly gained power. By 1930, it was Germany's second largest political party; three years later it was the only political party. In 1933, Hitler assumed the country's second-highest office, that of Chancellor. The next year, upon the death of the nation's president, Hitler adopted the title of Fuhrer, or leader.

As leader, Hitler gradually and then with increasing rapidity began to impose his vision for a global German/Aryan ascendency. Domestically, he moved against those groups and peoples he and his adherents viewed as either sub-human, or direct threats to his authority. Internationally, he initiated a series of military expansions into neighboring counties.

The internal efforts to cleanse territory under German (and therefore Nazi) control escalated between 1939 and 1945 into what is now called the Holocaust: a systematic, professionalized, genocidal effort that killed more than ten million people (by conservative historical estimates), stripping Europe of its Jewish population. Two million Jewish children were among those slaughtered. The Nazis also targeted homosexual men and women, labor organizers, professors, artists, mentally and physically disabled people, Catholic priests, resistance fighters, Jehovah's Witnesses, Romanis, and many others.

The international seizure of territory triggered WWII, a conflict involving almost every country in the world. Soldiers and civilians suffered alike as the globe divided into the Nazi-aligned Axis, and the Allied counties. Battles were waged from the Sahara to the steppes of Russia; from the Pacific Islands to cold waters of the northern Atlantic. When combined with the casualties of Hitler's genocide, WWII and its fallout account for the deaths of more than sixty million people—at that time, nearly three percent of the world's population.

The savagery lasted until the war's end and beyond. After entering the war in late December 1941, the United States inexorably tipped the balance of battle in favor of the Allies, which began a slow march toward the site of the conflict's genesis: Berlin. But even as the German troops—spread thin, lacking supplies, and suffering from exhaustion, starvation, and exposure—retreated, Hitler's death-machine worked without pause, eliminating as many of the residents of concentration camps and prisons as possible.

Finally, as the Allies closed in from the