Journal 02: On the Bottom...

"Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself. He will be a man whose life and death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity, in the most fortunate of cases, on the basis of a pure judgement of utility. It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term "extermination camp", and it is now clear what we seek to express by the phrase "to lie on the bottom"



Ode to a Häftling
Imprisoned and shackled, I stand today,
For a faith I reckoned with, such a grave price to pay,
Deprived of humanity, I am neither man nor beast,
But a Jew, on which greed and ambition shall feast
Reduced to a number, devoid of identity,
I know not who I am or what I may be.
The people I called my own,
Are rendered meek, with none to weep or moan.
Parched and dry, in body and soul,
In my mind, lies no aspiration or goal.
Mocked I am, I know not why
Neither the will to live, nor the strength to die.
Why doth liberty hide from me,
And redeem me from this captivity?
Blood oozes out, but not by mortal gashes to me,
My mind bleeds, yearning to be set free…
Ah! What is that sound piercing my ear,
Companion to sorrow and fear….
What is that descending down the stars, in the night sky?
An aura, gleaming, blinding my eye,
A light, gold and pure, smiling, beckoning me,
I realize I am now free,
The divine summon hath arrived,
The moment, for which I had strived.
I now walk towards my guardian,
In search of my destination,
Beyond this Earth and cosmos,
Into a world that shines and glows,
Without any prejudice or hollow views,
Where I am me, not a Häftling or Jew…