Vera Meisels

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Vera Meisels
I also know snow in menacing dawns
when we were
breathless
in case our vapor would reach
the
dogs searching for us.
Presentation Sarit Shatz
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Vera Meisels, Poet, Sculptor and
Translator. Mother of daughter and son, was born
in Czechoslovakia on June 11, 1936. At the age
of eight, she was taken to the Theresienstadt
ghetto. In 1949 she immigrated to Israel. She
studied sculpture at the Avni Institute. Her
poems were published in Iton 77, Ma'ariv, Ravkol
and the Slovakian translation in Romboid-
Bratislava and Elan- Prague. Books Israel,
1997 "Searching for Relatives"(Hebrew) published
by Gevanim Prague, 2001 "Svetluska v Terezine" in
Czech language published by GG Prague 2001
"Terezin's Firefly " English. translated by Riva
Rubin. published by GG Bratislava 2005 "Moje
vytrhnute korene" in Slovak language, published
by SNM
photo Viera Kamenicka
My mother tongue is unknown to you my father's
isn't spoken here my birth tongue is not
longer with me I dream in tongues, my roots are
torn.
DOMINO - Vera's story
THERESIENSTADT
Beit-Terezin
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RETURN TO THERESIENSTADT
It's not clear it's all getting blurred I'm
assailed by searches and proofs. They tell me
"Go, it'll close a circle", while for me it's all
parallel lines like railroad tracks into the
distance remembering myself in the
boxcar
clattering over them. A scrap of barred sky
overhead, looking for a lost doll, the moon
racing eye to eye with me in the aperture, as if
it was crossed out by a barbed-wire X.
And now, I arrive at the ghetto again, standing
opposite the "kinderheim" I see a house with
arched ceilings, walls, surviving layers of
whitewash and try to find a scratch, a bit of my
name. I search for a familiar little corner and
there's the "high" knob of the heavy gate I could
never reach to prove It was locked.
Vera's drawing in the ghetto
I touch and caress it in my gnarled hand and the
knob seems to shrivel in my fist.
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FIREFLY
The trees no longer give shade against the
scorching sun, looking somehow thin, their
leaves have fallen into windswept piles. The
firefly pushes through the leaves, often covered
completely, its glow hidden to near
extinction. It seems that even if someone
cared, they couldn't get it out unharmed. And I
remember being broucek- Little Firefly- In the
play based on Jan Karafiat's book.
On the Terezin ghetto stage, I danced before the
packed hall and the terrifying officers in the
front row and dreading the end because of the
skull on their caps. Afterwards I learned they
just wanted to prove that culture distracts the
mind from hunger.
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MY FATHER
I imagine him again, the scar this time deeper
in his forehead. His face flows purple as though
he is the saint of a Byzantine icon. The eyes
regard me in constant apology for not taking me
in time to the Luna Park.
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DOCUMENTARY FILM THE 81st BLOW
To Michael Goldman-the boy
I saw you looking out at me from the screen I
heard you telling about the eighty lashes you
withstood without a sob and about the
eighty- first blow, their disbelief, that landed
on you after the liberation from the camps after
your wounds had scabbed on your body, that was
the hardest of all. So close to you, I looked at
you wanting to touch your body scars and the
others trying to caress you through the glass
screen, to take you to my bosom. And you were
exposed to the whole House of Israel tuned to the
national channel, unable to know that one,
watching you, was lashing herself again and
again without counting.
The poem appeared in the "Journal of Genocide
Research" in New York
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MY LIBERATION DAY MAY 8 1945
And once again I had "toys", played "shop" I
scraped a brick from a ruin to make "paprika"
wrapped in a scrap of newspaper
announcing Relatives Sought. I made myself a
weathervane to check how the wind blew, to find
my direction.
I tied a rope to an empty shoebox to pull my lost
doll.
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HIDINGPLACE
Like an animal trained to hide in a
burrow silently lest it be discovered, so she
stifles her cries has sentenced herself to
silences humiliating adaptations and measured
steps. Like a trained animal that knows its
corner, has learnt its worth that bows its
head collapses as if it must again find a
hidingplace
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VACATION NIGHTMARES
Awakened by indeterminate stress I open my eyes a
thin crack through which I continue to see the
images Ive been dreaming. Still dark. The
lampshade lawn green, a beam of light on my
hotel bed, me in it pale as the one in
Rembrandts Anatomy Lesson. The wallpaper
encircles me in lines etched to look like iron
bars, spinning my head, keeping me stuck. I dont
know how or where to put down my foot. A change
of scene, my well-wishers said, will do you a
world of good.
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MY MUSSELMAN STATUE
Whittled wooden board scorched and warped rough
and unpolished. Everything has fallen from
you that could pad a bone, you are not easy on
the eye or to touch, but I loved the way the wood
flakes fell through my fingers until you were
revealed to me. You are close to me, years I've
waited to take you from the drawer of my
darkness, as if till now your existence was
just between us.
Vera's statue is in the Yad Va'shem Museum
in Jerusalem
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REMINDERS
On the cork notice board in the kitchen opposite
morning coffee notes are affixed by colored
pins. The sight is like a collection of
butterflies on display or drawings of my
childhood behind walls. The butterflies! I
never saw them desperately fluttering after
pollen, but their lifespan was also short.
on my board the dates march on till
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HOLOCAUST DAY
Still a few days till Holocaust day the date
marked on the calendar in a different color,
generally grey but not a holiday- business is as
usual, public transport flows, government offices
are open one can even renew a passport get a visa
to America for a visit or immigration the Embassy
is open unlike the day when a refugee from the
inferno had no address other than the Gates
of "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" where he came without a
passport prior appointment or reservations.
my neighbor has expressed the wish that when the
time comes his tombstone will be inscribed no. A
93278
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AFTER THE LIBERATION
Reflexes were checked, in spite of stupors and
temporary catatonia the stethoscope circled on a
bowed back, bumped into almost exposed ribs, as
for pressure, blood- pressure was
measured. Eyes remembered numbers at the
optical check. They weighed the limbs contained
within pallor, they couldn't handle emotions.
Vera six months after the liberation
Cecilia Biagini
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TEDDY BEAR UNDER AN EIDERDOWN
Once I was protected in my childhood
serenity. Padded with endearments some I gave to
my teddy bear and my doll who was then still able
to keep her eyes open. When the strangers came
to hang on me a number written on cardboard, they
wouldn't give me a little cardboard for my teddy
bear and my doll. I didn't want to leave them, so
I asked very nicely, but the strangers were
furious and ripped my doll from me because I was
holding it tight so I was left with my doll's
torn-off arm.
At least my teddy bear stayed whole. We stood
outside for a long time and I wasn't allowed to
talk or ask questions. I was very cold and I only
wanted to say that my teddy bear was lucky that
they didn't want to give him a number.
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FROM MY FATHERS LEGACY
From my father's legacy I have a Czechoslovakian
crystal ashtray. He bore his life in mortifying
smoke burying deep blocked sights miserly in
sharing his suffering. The ashtray in front of
me fills with the stubs of my life.
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SHABBAT
On my palms I count my lifelines branching off
as if each crack had a continuation almost
hypnotized, hands outstretched as for
charity. And when I get tired I lift them to
shield my eyes the way my grandmother blessed the
Shabbat candles the candlesticks have
disappeared, too.
Marc Chagall
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THE FOLDER
Of all people, she, the anonymous one who has
folded her past inside herself, where nobody can
get through to it, comes every morning to open
her storeroom of secondhand clothes and
objects. Her smile cheers everyone
bringing crammed boxes and plastic bags. Slowly
she pulls out each unwanted item. Carefully,
caressingly she smoothes and folds it. She, of
all people, is folding again as she did over
there, in the barracks where she stood before a
heap of personal belongings destined by kind
fate to be a sorter in the Canada Block
She, of all people, goes on folding. Now near the
end of her days, she carries on without
bitterness, attentively stacking parcel after
parcel securely tied to arrive intact for
refugees left destitute just as she was, in those
days. She, of all people.
Canada was the ironic name for the hard labor
unit in Auschwitz whose task was to collect the
belongings ofvictims in the shower rooms the
gas chambers and other places under the stern
supervision of the SS, so that they could be
sent to enrich the Third Reich.
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Thank you for watching
My E-mail veruska_at_013.net
Translated from Hebrew by Riva Rubin
Elgar Cello Concerto in E Minor
24.1.07