The Dead Bodies that Line the Streets
chatter and snipe at me constantly, as if I
were responsible for their being there. But I
ignore all their remonstrative and sarcastic
remarks. Favoritism or fraternization
with the enemies of the State is forbidden,
and I won’t tarnish my reputation or my
family name by giving them special privileges
that might alleviate their misery. Don’t they
deserve what’s happening to them? Didn’t they kill
our Lord and Savoiur? My best friend Kurt, though he wears
the same uniform as I, is not as cautious,
not as circumspect. Why shouldn’t we be paid to
do our job in this God-forsaken Ghetto and
be rewarded for sometimes not doing it as
well? he says before he slips behind the bricked wall
or behind the stack of bodies with his latest
protectee, a beautiful girl who hardly looks
Jewish at all. We’re much closer to the Front than
we are to home, he reminds me, buttoning his
uniform after he returns. Such things are routine
at the Front, he says, and he should know since
his brother was killed there only last spring. Sometimes,
I admit, I’m tempted when I see some lovely
girl who’d do anything for only a bit of
brown bread or a piece of sausage. I even caught
myself wondering what one of them might do for
a bite of chocolate or some cigarettes. But they
heard my innocent musings and have fastened their
rolled-back eyes on me ever since. I get angry,
threaten them, poke them with my bayonet: leave me
be, I shout. But their gaping mouths tsk tsk tsk at
me until I light up a cigarette and toss
the still-burning match onto one of their lolling
tongues. That usually silences them. These bodies
should be carted away and dumped somewhere, but Kurt
claims they’re here as a symbol to the living. As
far as I can determine, these beggars ignore
their dead. Instead they scurry around, stealing food
from each other, trying to bribe me or one of
the other fellows, hurling themselves over the
wall or through the wire. And the dead bodies that line
the streets certainly don’t care about their living
comrades or they wouldn’t lie around spying and
gossiping to annoy me, trying to prevent
me from doing my job. The bodies that line the
streets should be hauled away and incinerated,
their ashes scattered to the heavens. Then I could
perform my duties without interference, eat
meals without tasting dust,
sleep at night without dreams.
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Read more excerpts from
Where Lightning Strikes:
Poems on The Holocaust
The Dead Bodies that Line the Streets
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Lager-Lieder (Camp Songs)
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On the Other Hand,
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Survivor: One Who Survives
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The Day the Snakes Came
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Letter to Sylvia
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Where Lightning Strikes: Poems on the Holocaust © 1980-1986, 2000-2007, 2013 by Alexandria Constantinova Szeman. May not be reprinted or excerpted without written permission. Please do not support piracy of Intellectual Property
