From Gehinnom
From Gehinnom to the middle class
they moved, and they became
a memory collectively of mass
destruction, living flame,
the Holocaust that some of us now call
the Shoah and, like divers,
plumb depths to find their traces and to haul
wrecked hulls that lack survivors.
Leon Wieseltier, addressing The Jewish Center in Los Angeles on Yom Ha'Shoah,5758, asks: 'Who are the survivors? They are the ones who may dispense with collective memory, because they rely on personal memory.' He says of the survivors: 'They went from Gehenna to the middle class...and we must bow our head to their normalcy. For it is a spiritual achievement, one of the greatest spiritual achievements in the history of our people.'
11/7/98
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
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