Meeting in Belsen
For Anne Frank (1929-1945) .
One day in the autumn of 1944,
Along with your sister Margot,
You were deported from Auschwitz
to Bergen-Belsen.
When you arrived in the camp
the barracks were full,
so for several weeks
you lived in a crowded tent.
Unlike in Auschwitz,
there were no gas chambers in Belsen,
just shouting SS guards with dogs,
watch towers and barbed wire fence,
starvation and disease,
living skeletons of prisoners
tottering around like ghosts.
Typhus raged everywhere
And each hour brought new miseries.
You stared at the clouds in the sky
with your big eyes that grew bigger
in the camp on your sunken face.
Your head was shaven now
and you dressed in coarse rags.
But in your tiny fragile figure
the pure fire of your lofty soul
kept burning.
Then winter came with ice and snow,
frosty winds swept through the camp.
The barracks were unheated in Belsen.
The cold followed you everywhere
And the hunger pangs became unbearable.
You wished at least you could write
but it was hard to get paper or pencil.
Nevertheless, February arrived
with thrilling news.
Amid tears and smiles you found out
with boundless excitement
that an old school friend from Amsterdam
was also in Bergen-Belsen,
in another section of the camp.
Although you could have been shot for it,
[...] Read more
poem by Paul Hartal
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