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65 results in My Shadow in Dachau

Page 3 of 4

  • Josef Massetkin, Russia, biography

  • from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 159-162

  • Summary

    Josef Massetkin, was born in 1918 in Saratov, Russia. The Russian physician was imprisoned in Dachau on March 1, 1944 (prisoner number 64,734). In 1945 he and his fellow prisoner and colleague, the Austrian physician Dr. Ella Lingens, were allocated the roles of medical co-supervisors of the small women's camp, which was opened in the last few months before the liberation next to the disinfection barracks of the Dachau camp. All of Massetkin's poems published in this collection were kept in Dr. Lingens's possession. The poems were written partly in Russian and partly in French, in which the author was able to speak directly to his friends. And so Massetkin was also mentioned by Arthur Haulot (p. 149) in Haulot's camp diary, because on February 6, 1945, he had dedicated a poem in French to Haulot in attempt to comfort him. Haulot thanked him in his diary with the words: “Dear old Josef! What a heart you possess, that knows mine so precisely.”

    For his Austrian colleague Dr. Lingens, one of the few female prisoners in Dachau, Massetkin also wrote a poem so as to comfort her: “Mutti kommt in Sommer” (Mother Is Coming in the Summer).

    Massetkin's other poems, including “Take Me In!,” were written after the liberation of the camp on April 29, 1945, during the period when the “freed prisoners” still had to remain there under quarantine, some of them until June 1945.

    Josef Massetkin's later fate, after his liberation from Dachau concentration camp, continued in tragedy, as he, like many of his fellow countrymen who returned from German imprisonment, was taken to further camps in Russia, something he himself had already anticipated. Later he lived in Gorky and then worked as a dermatologist in Perm, where he died in early 1990.

    Despite the thousands of Russian deportees who were imprisoned in Dachau, Yosef Massetkin's poems are the only testimonies in Russian that, thanks to the help of Dr. Lingens, could be made accessible to this collection.

  • Feliks Rak, Poland

  • from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 108-112

  • Summary

    Za drutami

    Usta moje były spragnione wody,

    jak źdźbła młodej trawy—wiosennej rosy.

    Serce wołało ciepła ręki matczynej,

    jak majowe kwiaty promienia słońca.

    Ja tu jestem na wpół nagi i żywy.

    Życie moje było gorsze od tarniny,

    rosnącej na skalistej górze z dala,

    hen tam gdzieś na wysokim szczycie skały.

    Straszne moje życie tu, za drutami

    w dachauskim piekle, Bóg jest tu mały.

    Dziś dla mnie jedyną pociechą są

    wschodzącego słońca na moją Polską

    te moje kochane czerwone zorze,

    one tu są świadkiem moich apeli,

    które niosą co dnia zgubę i zgrozę.

    Te mury kiedyś raz pękną o zmroku

    i wieże esesmańskie pustką stać będą,

    w nasze okna zajrzy światło wolności

    i nastaną dni radości w tym piekle.

    Ileż tu jest wkoło ludzkiej bezsilności.

    Krematorium dymi i dymi co dnia,

    po co mi tak bije to moje serce?

    Chyba jest głupia ta moja ułuda.

    Ja mam patrzeć co dnia na zwały trupów—

    mówią, że gdzieś w świecie istnieją cuda.

    To znaczy, że ja się zgadzam tak patrzeć?

    O nie, o nie, wy krwawi, okrutni mordercy!

    O jakże ten dzień dla mnie się dłuży!

    Dziś rano przyjaciel mój, Janek, poszedł do nieba,

    nim wyzionął ducha, prosił jeszcze chleba.

    Behind the Wire

    My lips call out for water

    like young blades of grass—Spring Dew.

    The heart cries for my mother's warmth,

    like May flowers for a ray of sunshine.

    I am here naked and half-alive.

    My life was worse than the sloe,

    growing alone on a rocky mountain,

    far away on the top of a high rock.

    My life is horrible here, behind the barbed wire:

    in this hell which is Dachau, God can do nothing.

    Today, the only consolation for me is

    the sun that rises on my Poland:

    I loved the red auroras,

    sounding out like witnesses,

    to destruction and terror.

    One day these walls will burst at dusk

    and the SS towers will become void.

    Freedom's light will come through the windows,

    offering days of joy in this hell.

    How much human helplessness there is everywhere.

    The crematorium smokes and smokes every day,

    why do I need my heart to keep beating?

    I think it's some foolish delusion of mine.

    I have to look at the piles of corpses—

    they say that somewhere in the world there are miracles.

  • Richard Scheid, Germany, biography

  • from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 153-158

  • Summary

    Richard Scheid was born in 1876 in Koblenz, Germany. Scheid worked as a pharmacist, but later became active in education and as a writer. In 1933, he was caught up in the first large wave of arrests in Germany. Held initially at various prisons in Munich, he was sent to Dachau on December 19, 1934 (prisoner number 6,767), where, during the four years of his imprisonment, he was forced to endure the “dark cell” and the “punishment squad.” He was released from Dachau in 1938. A number of Scheid's poems have been published in anthologies. He died in Munich in 1962.

    Vision in Erwartung des Todes

    O sprich zu mir, die mich so zart geliebt,

    o teures Bild, von dessen Hauch ich lebe—

    o rufe mich, daß ich mit dir entschwebe,

    wenn diese Erde jetzt in nichts zerstiebt.

    Die ganze Schöpfung ist von dir entzückt,

    ich sehe schon der Seraphim Erstaunen,

    wenn unterm Donner der Gerichtsposaunen

    sich Gottes Mund mit deinem Lächeln schmückt.

    1934 in sechsten Monat der Dunkelhaft im KZ Dachau geschrieben.An: Die junge Freundin—verschollen in Holland.

    Vision in Anticipation of Death

    O, speak to me: you loved me tenderly,

    o precious image, from whose breath I am living—

    as now the earth disperses into nothing,

    we will float away together: call to me.

    In you the whole of creation takes delight;

    I see already the Seraphim in wonder

    on Judgment Day, when amid the trumpets’ thunder,

    the mouth of God is emblazoned with your smile.

    Written in 1934, in the sixth month of imprisonment

    in the “dark cell” in Dachau Concentration Camp.

    To my young girlfriend—missing in Holland

    —Translated by Marielle Sutherland

    Lebenswende

    Hat sich, o meine Seele,

    dein Herbsttag nun erfüllt?

    Vom Sturm gekühlt die Kehle,

    und ist dein Durst gestillt?

    Du sinkst zum Born der Schmerzen nieder,

    verloren allem, was da war.

    Du fällst ins All. Dann kehrst du wieder,

    verwandelt, neu und wunderbar.

    Dachau 1938

  • Franc Dermastja-Som, Slovenia, biography

  • from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 97-100

  • Summary

    Franc Dermastja-Som was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1919. He was deported to Dachau on January 20, 1944, and registered as prisoner number 102,246. He was sent from there to the concentration camp at Natzweiler and was then returned to Dachau, from which he was later freed.

    This poem was written in April 1945, shortly before liberation.

    Skupen Grob

    Tisoč mož, več, še več

    leži v eni jami,

    kot polena nametani

    skupaj bodo pokopani.

    Prst vas bo zasula,

    v usta vam bo rila,

    še mrtve vas dušila

    zemlja tuja in nemila.

    IV, 1945

    Shared Grave

    A thousand men, more, and yet more

    lying in a single pit,

    strewn about like firewood

    together will be buried.

    The soil will bury you,

    into your mouth it will rush

    choking you, even in death

    in an unkind, foreign land.

    April, 1945—Translated by Kristina Zdravič Reardon and Matevž Kersnik

  • Henri Pouzol, France

  • from Part IV - The Years after 1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 250-256

  • Summary

    Prière

    Seigneur, donnez-moi la peine

    Seigneur, donnez-moi la peine

    et qu'elle fructifie en moi pour s'ouvrir à la peine

    de tous les hommes du monde

    Seigneur ouvrez-moi à la peine

    enfouissez-la en moi

    pour que demain elle sourde en palpable inquiétude

    Seigneur faites que chaque minute de mon devenir

    soit un déchirement

    et le rappel constant de votre grâce

    et le rappel certain de ma juste misère

    Seigneur ouvrez-moi à la peine et ce soir et demain

    Au nom des gueux du monde

    ne m’épargnez point.

    1952

    Prayer

    Lord, give me pain

    Lord, give me pain

    and let it flourish in me so it opens up to the pain

    of all the men on earth

    Lord open me up to the pain

    bury it in me

    so that tomorrow it wells up in me in palpable fear

    Lord let every minute of my becoming

    be a rending

    and the constant reminder of your grace

    and the certain reminder of my just misery

    Lord open me up to pain and tonight and tomorrow

    In the name of all the beggars on earth

    spare me nothing.

    1952—Translated by Donna Stonecipher

    Ce visage en moi

    la mort a son visage en moi

    présence justifiée de promiscuité douce

    crépuscules brûlés sans une seule aurore

    frissons assassinés à fleur de cicatrice

    la mort a son visage en moi

    et la nuit et le jour ce visage m'interpelle

    c'est mêlée a mon souffle la promesse violette

    c'est un premier printemps déjà terni d'hiver

    c'est caché sous mon rire le rictus de l'aube

    la mort a son visage en moi

    mais la nuit déchirée soulève ce visage

    la prairie ressuscite

    mille regards ont lui

    la grappe fraternelle qui oscille quelque part

    dans l'univers intact

    du passé parallèle

    accueille ma voix tronquée et sa toison de gel

    la mort a son visage en moi

    à tout jamais fidèle à nos amis détruits.

    1972

  • Michel Jacques, France, biography

  • from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 67-72

  • Summary

    Michel Jacques was born in 1920 in Neuilly sur Seine, France. Jacques was brought to Dachau on October 26, 1944 and registered as prisoner number 116,789. He was imprisoned in the concentration camp of Natzweiler from November 9–18, 1944, but was being held in Dachau at liberation. Following liberation in 1945, Michel Jacques published numerous poems in French-language anthologies.

    Voyage

    Depuis deux jours, le train semble tourner en rond

    dans un pays qui ne doit plus être le nôtre

    Debout: »Hommes 40«, lit-on, et nous sommes

    cent vingt.

    Sans eau, sans air, la folie naît

    La panique

    Le bruit du train n'est plus pour moi

    que ces trois mots

    inlassablement répétés

    Train de mort—Train de mort—Train de mort—

    La haine de celui qui vous colle au corps

    monte en vous

    Train de mort—Train de mort—Train de mort—

    Une horrible envie de carnage

    A votre bouche le goût du sang

    Train de mort—Train de mort—Train de mort—

    Si vous le balanciez dehors

    peut-être un peu plus d'air pour vous

    Train de mort—Train de mort—Train de mort—

    Ce corps qui s'affaisse

    vous le piétinez avec rage

    Train de mort—Train de mort—Train de mort—

    L'horrible odeur vous étouffe

    La nuit tombe en vous.

    Journey

    For two days now it seems our train is going nowhere

    in a land no longer ours. On a plaque we read:

    Standing: Men 40, when we are

    one hundred and twenty.

    With no water, no air, there is madness,

    Panic,

    The noise of the train that is now no more

    than a couple of words

    repeated endlessly

    Death train—Death train—Death train

    A hatred for the man pressed against you

    rises within

    Death train—Death train—Death train

    An awful desire for carnage

    The taste of blood in your mouth

    Death train—Death train—Death train

    If you could chuck him out

    You'd maybe get more air

    Death train—Death train—Death train

    This body slumped beside you

    You trample it, enraged

    Death train—Death train—Death train

    The foul smell makes you gag

    Within you night falls.

    —Translated by David Cooke

  • Josef Schneeweiss, Austria, biography

  • from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 143-148

  • Summary

    Josef Schneeweiss was born in 1913 in Vienna. He was politically engaged from an early age; he became a member of the Union of Socialist High School Pupils and went as a volunteer to Spain to fight against fascism. Afterwards he was interned in France; this was followed by terms in prison, a trial before the People's Court in Vienna, and finally in 1942, now a medical student, Schneeweiss was taken to Dachau concentration camp, where he had to work for two years in the death chamber. During this time he met both the Belgian deportee Arthur Haulot (p. 149) and the young Russian doctor Yosef Massetkin (biography, p. 159), with whom he formed a close friendship. In his autobiography Keine Führer, keine Götter (No Führer, No Gods, 1986), Schneeweiss recalls an incident that happened shortly before the liberation of Dachau on April 29, 1945, and which shows how far friendship can go under such circumstances:

    On the 25th or 26th of April 1945 we heard that the camp was going to be evacuated … the new Luxembourgish Kapo of the hospital barrack … arranged for me to be a first-aid attendant in the last marching block. I was indignant, because I would have much preferred to stay in the camp, which was supposed to be liberated in the next one or two days…. The Russian physician Dr. Massetkin was to go with block 8. He wept and was utterly despondent: “I don't have a chance; they're going to kill me for sure.” I jumped in for him … it turned out that we were in the last marching block to leave Dachau….

    This march became the so-called “death march” of the Dachau prisoners— when two days before the liberation, the exhausted inmates were to be evacuated toward the mountains so as not to fall into the hands of the Allies. Josef Schneeweiss, unlike many others who died of exhaustion or were shot in the last few seconds, succeeded in escaping from the march and finally returned to his homeland.

    After his return to Vienna, he finished his studies in medicine and rebuilt the Union of Socialist University Students. During his later career as a physician he dedicated himself to reforming health care. He lived in Vienna until his death in 1995.

  • Levi Shalit, Israel, biography

  • from Part III - Liberation: Dachau, April 29, 1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 191-193

  • Summary

    Levi Shalit was a Jewish writer born in 1916 in Kuibyshev, Russia, who spent his youth in Lithuania. During the German occupation he was sent to the ghetto, where he became an active member of an underground organization. On July 29, 1944 he was deported along with the remainder of the 120,000 Lithuanian Jews to Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. Shortly afterwards, in August 1944, he was sent to Dachau and then to its external camp Kaufering No. 2 near Landsberg. His father, who was also sent to the same external camp, died there. Levi Shalit survived and, shortly before the liberation of the camp, was evacuated along with thousands of other prisoners in the so-called “death march.” He was liberated near Wolfratshausen in Bavaria. After his liberation he lived and worked as a journalist in South Africa and Israel. In his book Beyond Dachau, published in 1980 in Johannesburg, he describes his experiences in Dachau and its external camps. The following poem is taken from that work. Levi Shalit died in Israel in 1994.

    In 1984 the author returned to the Dachau, Kaufering, and Landsberg camps and wrote about it in the article “A Look Back at Hell”: “I was torn between the craving to ‘visit’ the mass graves and my vow never again to tread on German soil….”

    But his wish to see his father's and friends’ graves was stronger, and so he returned in 1984 and wrote:

    I was at this pit last on the day before I left Germany. I came to take leave of my father and of friends buried here.

    My father expired one winter's night while he lay on a plank near me. He was so starved and emaciated, that his bones peered through his skin. With the help of a friend I carried him out of the barrack. With our weakened hands we laid him beside the pile of the dead, already frozen stiff in the icy air. I wanted to go along with the burial squad…. But the camp guards drove me back with blows. So I washed my father with my tears and left him lying among the dead …

    All the pits have become one pit. The earth has been flattened….

  • Stanisław Wygodzki, Poland

  • from Part IV - The Years after 1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 240-247

  • Summary

    Listopad

    Co jest za nocą? Co jest za snem

    i za milczeniem?

    Liście umarłe pływają dnem

    podartym cieniem.

    Czego mi słuchać, gdy przyjdzie mrok?

    Ciągle to samo?

    Ojciec przechodzi, mija mój wzrok

    i wołam: Mamo!

    Potem przechodzi najmłodszy brat,

    czemu nie patrzysz!

    Kto tu nieżywy? Kto się tu wkradł

    i ślad kto zatrze?

    Duchy i cienie! Czymże jest cień

    w grudce popiołu?

    Córko! Nie mijaj! Idziesz przez sień

    z pieśnią wesołą.

    Już zawsze liście i zawsze piach

    jedynym śladem?

    Popiół na szybach, liście przy drzwiach

    w noc listopada.

    November

    What is beyond the night? What is beyond the dreams

    and the silence?

    Dead leaves flow on the river bed

    like threadbare shadows.

    What shall I listen to when darkness falls?

    Always the same?

    Father passes by, avoiding my gaze

    and I call out: Mum!

    Then my youngest brother passes by,

    why don't you look!

    Who here is not alive? Who has crept in here

    and who'll erase the traces?

    Spirits and shadows! What is a shadow

    in a heap of dust?

    Daughter! Don't go! You cross the hallway

    singing a cheerful song.

    Will now forever the leaves, forever the sand

    remain the only trace?

    The ash on the window panes, the leaves by the door

    on a November night.

    —Translated by Patrick John Corness

    O trudach

    Trudy moje serdeczne,

    trudy moje bolesne,

    żale nigdy niewczesne,

    żale nigdy niewieczne.

    Smutki moje nie pierwsze,

    smutki me nie ostatnie.

    Kiedy serce się zatnie,

    to chyba także wierszem.

    Wiersz wyciągnijcie jak drzazgę

    i niech mnie dłużej nie boli.

    Proszę, oddajcie mnie ziemi,

    drzazgę oddajcie topoli.

    My Tribulations

    My heartfelt tribulations,

    my painful tribulations,

    laments never untimely,

    laments never uneternal.

    My sadness is not the first,

    my sadness is not the last,

    When my heart seizes up,

    then perhaps that's the fault of a poem too.

    Extract the poetry like a splinter,

    don't let it hurt me any longer.

    Please give me back to the earth,

    give the poplar back its splinter.

    —Translated by Patrick John Corness

  • Eugène Malzac, France, biography

  • from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 73-75

  • Summary

    Eugène Malzac was born in 1920 in Clermont Ferrand, France. Malzac arrived at Dachau concentration camp on July 5, 1944, on the infamous Train-de-mort (death train), a transport of 2,521 deportees, 984 of whom died en route. Malzac was registered as prisoner number 77,881 and was later liberated from the external camp of Allach. Malzac still visits schools and colleges in France and around the world, talking to pupils about his experiences in the anti-Nazi resistance, his deportation, and his imprisonment in concentration camps.

    Les squelettes vivants

    Ils vont lentement, les yeux fixes hagards

    Trébuchant, voûtés, la tête basse

    S'arrêtant ici, là, au hasard

    Ce sont les squelettes vivants qui passent

    Ils ne ressentent rien, ni le vent, ni le froid

    La maladie même semble marquer le pas

    Leurs peaux qui collent à l'os, leurs peaux qui se craquèlent

    Et font de ces enfants des vieux que démantèlent

    Les coups, les privations, les brimades aussi

    Des bourreaux implacables, les sinistres nazis

    La mort est là qui rôde, redoutable hideuse

    Elle prend tout son temps, l'implacable faucheuse

    Personne ne fera le travail à sa place

    Ce sont les squelettes vivants qui passent.

    Living Skeletons

    They move slowly, their wild eyes staring

    They are stumbling, bent over, their heads lowered

    stopping here, there, aimlessly.

    They are living skeletons passing by

    They feel nothing, not the wind not the cold

    Even their illness marks time

    Their torn skin clinging to their bones

    So that children become old people

    They are falling apart

    Absorbing the blows, the hardship, the taunts also

    Of pitiless executioners, the sinister Nazis

    Death is prowling around them, fearsome, hideous,

    Taking his time, an implacable reaper

    No one else will do his work,

    They are living skeletons passing by.

    —Translated by David Cooke

  • Christoph Hackethal, Germany, biography

  • from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 163-166

  • Summary

    Christoph Hackethal was born in 1899 in Hannover, Germany. He was ordained as a Catholic priest in Hildesheim in 1923. On April 18, 1941, the Gestapo came to his presbytery in Bündheim and arrested him for “actions harmful to the state and defeatist utterances.” He was first brought to the notorious Lager 21 at Salzgitter-Hallendorf. On July 26, 1941, he was transported to Dachau and registered there on August 8 as prisoner number 26,888. Here he was assigned to the Arbeitskommando “Kräuterplantage” (work detail “Herb Plantation”), but the hard labor, moving earth in all kinds of weather, was too much for the priest, whose health was already frail. Hackethal died of a pulmonary infection on August 25, 1942, after an illness lasting twenty-one days.

    On the forty-fifth anniversary of his death, documents were found in the parish hall of St.-Gregor in Bündheim. The yellowed letters, handwritten poems, diary entries over forty years old, and photographs formed a harrowing testimony. “Premonition of Death,” the poem reproduced here, was also part of that collection.

    Todesahnung

    Blumige Wiese

    im Abendstein—

    Hauchest den Duft

    deines Blühens mir ein—

    Grüßest mich heute

    zum letzten Mal:

    Morgen trifft dich

    des Schnitters Stahl.

    Dachau 1942

    Premonition of Death

    Blossoming meadow

    in the stony evening,

    it's your flower's scent

    that I still breathe.

    Today you greet me

    for the very last time.

    Tomorrow you'll meet

    the steel scythe.

    Dachau 1942—Translated by Alistair Noon

  • Bojan Ajdič, Slovenia, biography

  • from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 113-116

  • Summary

    Bojan Ajdič was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1921. On March 19, 1944, the twenty-three-year-old Slovenian teacher was taken to Dachau, where he was registered as prisoner number 65,715. He was freed when Dachau was liberated in 1945.

    The following poem was written under the title “Last Day” on December 31, 1944, when the author received his first letter from home. Later he changed and expanded the poem, gave it the title “Premonition,” and published it under the pseudonym “Blajc” in the journal Borec in 1954. The author preserved the original handwritten draft along with a calendar of the years 1944–45 in a pocket notebook.

    Slutnja

    Zadnji mesec v letu

    in v njem zadnji dan—

    pa prejel sem prvo pismo.

    Kaj, če bil bi že sežgan

    v tem tujem svetu,

    kjer ljudje več nismo?

    Ne tega dne—

    že davno prej je legla

    dachauska megla

    na misli, na moje srce!

    Ne ljudje, ne živali, ne bilke

    —zdaj smo tukaj le številke …

    Zadnji mesec,

    v letu zadnji dan,

    a komaj prvo pismo …

    In v njem pozdrav

    v obetajoči sreči:

    “Ljubi moj, si zdrav?”

    Je kasni ta pozdrav

    tudi zadnji iz domovine?

    Do drugega lahko izgine

    moj skelet v skeletov peči …

    “Si zdrav, si zdrav?”

    O, zdrav sem, zdrav,

    čeprav v nemoči

    telo se sloči …

    Zdrav sem, zdrav,

    če zdravje moč je za pozdrav

    in klic za zadnje maščevanje:

    “Dachau, prekleti Dachau!”

    Preden pa pride iz daljav

    v pismu drugi pozdrav

    zame, med tisoči mrtvo bilko,

    —bodo v taborišču Dachau

    mojo že izbrisali številko …

    Premonition

    The last month of the year

    and the last day of that—

    and here's my first letter.

    What if I'd already been burned

    in this alien world

    where we're not even people?

    It didn't just happen today—

    long ago the fogs of Dachau

    came to enshroud

    my thoughts, my heart.

    Not people, not animals, not even lumber

    —here you become a mere number.

    The last month,

    last day of the year,

    this first letter just makes it …

    In its greeting a flicker

    of happiness gleams,

    “My darling, are you well?”

    Will this late greeting

    be the last one from home?

    Before another comes, my bones

    could perish in the bone-consuming oven …

  • László Salamon, Romania (Hungarian mother tongue)

  • from Part IV - The Years after 1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 234-235

  • Summary

    Januári hajnal

    Halottaim a szívemben élnek.

    A fagyosan izzó lámpafények

    árnyaiba botlom. Hét óra még,

    csillagait most oltja ki az ég.

    Tetves, szétfoszló szennyfoltos ingben

    ilyenkor álltunk ki Kauferingben

    szitkok közt, félőn, csatakba fúlva,

    gyomrunkba az éhség kínját gyúrva.

    És mégis élek. A gyárszirénák

    az élet frissült alarmját fújják.

    A hó fagyott harmatként szikrázik.

    A város ébred, a szívem fázik.

    Azután lassan felenged lelkem,

    gondom harcos gondolatba rebben.

    Roppant hangja a világnak ébreszt,

    hogy méltó legyek nagy egészéhez.

    Kattog a gép, friss hadrendbe állnak

    szavaim. Már oszlanak az árnyak.

    Az ablakon át kéken kél a reggel,

    s én megtelek boldog munkakedvvel.

    Lelkem mélyén még kimérák élnek,

    de hatalmasabb náluk az élet.

    Ki annyit sirattam és temettem:

    a harc majd megvált magamtól éngem.

    Cluj-Napoca, 1946

    January Dawn

    The dead live in my heart. I limp through nights

    of shadow cast by an icy haze of lights.

    Seven pm. The hour or thereabouts

    when sky decides to put the last stars out.

    It is the time when at Kaufering we'd stand

    in torn, stained shirts, in lice-infested bands,

    frightened, cursed, half-drowned in seas of mud,

    tortured with hunger, weak for lack of food.

    And yet still living. The factory siren blasts

    the latest of life's alarms while body lasts.

    Snow sparkles like dew as the town awakes,

    the heart cools down, a mass of chills and aches.

    Then slowly soul recovers, mind rebels,

    and turns to thoughts of struggle. Martial bells

    begin to ring and wake the world. I rise

    and hope to be worthy of such enterprise.

    The typewriter clacks on, my words line up

    in battle-order. And off the shadows slip,

    morning arrives out of the clearest blue,

    I'm ready and fighting fit to see it through.

    Deep down the dark chimeras still survive

    but how much greater the sense of being alive.

    I who have wept and filled too many graves,

    am rescued from myself. The struggle saves.

    Klausenburg, 1946—Translated by George Szirtes

  • Fran Albrecht, Slovenia, biography

  • from Part III - Liberation: Dachau, April 29, 1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 215-218

  • Summary

    Fran Albrecht was born in 1889 in Kamnik, Slovenia. The Slovenian poet, critic, and essayist was deported to Dachau on January 8, 1944 (prisoner number 60,980) and remained there until its liberation in 1945. The poem included here was written immediately after the liberation, in commemoration of the concentration camp of Dachau. It was first published in the Slovenian weekly journal TV-15, no. 17–18 on April 29, 1976. The handwritten manuscript is located in the National Museum of Contemporary History (previously the Museum of the People's Revolution) in Ljubljana. Fran Albrecht died in 1963 in Ljubljana.

    Dachau

    Potomcem sveta

    Mi, ki prišli smo živi iz pekla

    fašističnega razčlovečenja,

    smo dolžni vam—sopotnikom gorja,

    ki z nami upali ste in trpeli,

    da še kdaj kot ljudje bi zaživeli,

    a ste v nasilni smrti onemeli—

    da kliknemo vsem narodom sveta:

    Ta kraj je bil preklet. Ta kraj je svet.

    Ta kraj je posvečen od muk in groze.

    In poveličan v mučeniški slavi

    od neizmerne nečloveške smrti.

    Zato, popotnik, stopaj tiho tod.

    Pobožno stopaj, s sklonjeno glavo.

    Pot, ki ga stopaš, je bil križev pot.

    Dachau

    To the World's Descendants

    We who have come through the hell

    of fascist dehumanization,

    we owe it you—sojourners of our woe

    who suffered with us and hoped

    to one day resume life as people,

    but succumbed to a violent death—

    to declaim to all the nations of the world:

    This space was cursed. This space is holy.

    This space has been hallowed in terror and pain.

    Exalted in the torturous glory

    of countless inhuman deaths.

    Traveler, pass through this space in silence.

    Go reverently, head bowed.

    For you are treading the way of the cross.

    —Translated by Michael Biggins

  • Tadeusz Borowski, Poland

  • from Part IV - The Years after 1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 236-239

  • Summary

    Obóz pod Monachium

    Kamień i zieleń. Pachnie wiatr,

    swoboda. Drogi prosto

    idą w horyzont. Płot z żelaznych krat.

    Karabiny. Policja Posty.

    Minione. Zapomniane, Wiem.

    Żołnierskim butem—historia?

    Opar, mgła nocy, sen, sen:

    krematorium.

    Więc—akwarium mętnych zdarzeń. Pełznie

    lato—niczyje. Ważą się sprawy.

    Tłum. Wargi ściśnięte boleśnie.

    Nienawiść.

    Tysiące ust milczących. Czyste niebo

    w oczach nabiegłych strachem.

    Kamień i zieleń. Czas martwo zakrzepły.

    Monachium …

    Camp Near Munich

    Stone and green. The wind smells of

    freedom. Roads head off straight

    into the horizon. Fence with iron bars.

    Guns. Police. Posts.

    The past. Forgotten, I know.

    The soldier's boot—the history?

    Mist, fog, night, sleep, sleep:

    the crematorium.

    So—the aquarium's murky events. The crawling

    Summer is no one's. Weigh the matter.

    Crowd. Lips pressed painfully.

    Hatred.

    Thousands of silent mouths. Clean Sky

    filled with eyes full of fear.

    Stone and green. Congealed dead time.

    Munich …

    —Translated by Belinda Cooke and Maçiek Mirowski

    Sielanka

    Wyszli ludzie krematoryjni,

    wyszli ludzie tatuowani

    na świat wolny, na zielone lato,

    między łąki i między łany.

    Wyszli ludzie, którzy przeżyli,

    wyszli ludzie umarłych szukać.

    Wyszli zbierać spalonych popioły

    bezimienne, nietrwałe, kruche.

    Wyszli ludzie, pogodni, wolni

    na świat wolny, na zielone lato.

    Zapomnieli szukać w polu popiołu,

    nazbierali naręcz prostych kwiatów.

    Idyll

    The people left the crematoria,

    the tattooed people left

    into the world of freedom, into the green summer,

    between and among the fields of grassland.

    The people who survived left.

    They went out to look for the dead.

    They went out to collect the ashes of the burned—

    the nameless, unstable, fragile ones.

    The people of hope and freedom left into

    the world of freedom, into the green summer.

    They forgot to look for the ash in the field,

    They gathered an armful of simple flowers.

    —Translated by Belinda Cooke and Maçiek Mirowski

  • Maria Johanna Vaders, The Netherlands, biography

  • from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
  • Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
  • Book:
    My Shadow in Dachau
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 March 2018
    Print publication:
    15 June 2014, pp 44-47

  • Summary

    Maria Johanna Vaders was born in 1922 in The Hague, the Netherlands.

    From the age of barely eighteen, Vaders, a young civil servant at The Hague's employment office, was involved in various resistance movements. The group to which Vaders belonged went by the code name “A.C. contact V.G.” (Officials Contact Free Group The Hague). They forged identity papers and identity cards and carried out courier missions.

    In 1944, after three years of operation, the group was denounced by an informer. Maria Vaders was sent to the Oranjehotel prison in Scheveningen on June 20, 1944, then deported to Herzogenbusch, a section of the SS concentration camp of Vught in the Netherlands. On September 6, 1944, the camp's male prisoners were transported by cattle truck to the concentration camp Oranienburg and the female prisoners to the concentration camp Ravensbrück. Vaders was one of the group of two hundred Dutch women sent on October 13, 1944, to the Agfa Camera Factory, an external camp of Dachau in the Giesing section of Munich. They were rare among prisoners of Dachau in that they were female. Vaders was registered as prisoner number 123,145, survived to see liberation, and subsequently returned to the Netherlands.

    Vaders later wrote about the attempts she and the other Dutch women in this external camp made to fight the inhuman Nazi system at the camp: their resistance against the excessively long hours of work, punishment roll-calls, and inadequate rations. As Vaders was held responsible for the women's acts of resistance, she was sent for solitary confinement in “the bunker” for seven weeks. During this time, she fell ill and was transferred to the disinfection barracks for two weeks, only to be returned to the bunker afterwards. She later learned that she was supposed to have been deported to Bergen-Belsen as an “NN” (Nacht und Nebel, night and fog) prisoner, but it never happened.

    Vaders said about her poem “Bunker Dachau,” “I didn't write in the bunker, it was too dangerous. I had hidden a pencil in my hair and at some point I managed to write out a short note on toilet paper in shorthand. I then wrote down all my thoughts at some later point….” In 1993, Maria Vaders published a small collection of poems about her concentration camp experiences, including the poem reproduced here. She died in the Netherlands in 2000.

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