An Execution

To the memory of Sima Shtainer who has lost her life
in a fight with an SS officer in October of 1942

Naked people are forced to an execution site…
Children with their eyes as blue as the sea,
Dark-haired Jewish young beauties,
Old people with a biblical grief on their faces…
Air is filled with the voices of bullets and sounds of death.
It is terribly cold, dreadful and shocking…
Mums, nearly losing their minds,
Hide their children behind backs of seniors.
Ruthless and terrible, murderers
Are packing a bottomless ravine with shot bodies.
Footwear, clothes and corpses
Are brutally trampled by their boots.
With every horrible reverberation of: “Fire!”
People’s life ends, sinking in a beetroot-colored sludge.

The German SS officer stands in a new uniform,
Just recently he became the commander,
But now and here this haughty well-cared blond creature
Is the Master, the Judge and the Lord.
“J;dischen Schweine” – he calls all people,
Facing him at the border of life.
Girls are hiding their bashful breasts,
As white as if outlined with chalk…
But among them he can see a real beauty,
The youngest daughter of the rabbi.
A carnivorous smile comes to the fascist’s face.
And he thinks: “These mournful persons
Are vile and pity, but this maiden
Is so good, young and innocent …
I can postpone her death and replace it with a temporary feast”…
And he approaches her, touching her body with his uniform:
“Schie;en Sie sie nicht!* This Jewish hore will serve the Reich!”

The rage on her lips begins to boil,
Her teeth producing a terrible creak.
Straining her flesh and losing her conscience,
She throws up her body and seizes to the fascist’s throat,
Tearing up his artery and veins.
Blood, as boiled wine, scatters all over,
Carrying them away in the madness of the ravine …

An old blind man, the unfortunate father of his young daughter,
Cannot see the bloody wedding.
The aged rabbi, rhythmically shaking,
Repeats as an oath the short saga of the ancient Kol Nidre,
Asking his G-d for mercy…
But his Temple, his Synagogue, has been burned down.

* Do not shoot her