The Stars and the Cookie Jar

I was reading Chaim Rumkowski's 'Give Me Your Children!' speech of 1942, and I am sickened by what a complete and utter slime that man was. He was like a used-car salesman dealing in lives. I don't care what pressure he was under. He turned the Lodz ghetto into his own personal fiefdom, and he was a coward.

He reminds me a bit of Bush.

So, yes, anyway, this speech. In 1942 Rumkowski had this idea that he'd save the working backbone of his ghetto population by sacrificing... the old and the sick, right? Well, yes. That's the first paragraph in the speech. And then he goes on to say there aren't enough old people. Or sick people. That they want 20,000, and he just can't make that weight from the aged and ill. Don't blame him, he's just got to fill the numbers.

So he took all the children under the age of nine.

No no no what is wrong with you people? Rise up and fight! Anything but your kids! Anything but your heart and immortality on this earth! What is the matter with you all that you listened to him? I know you're dead now and you can't hear me, may your memories be for a blessing, what the HELL WERE YOU DOING?

I don't care. Hunger wouldn't addle me that much. Despair wouldn't make me that complacent. Take my children out of my hands and you better hope you're a fast shot.

Failing that, I would -- yes. I would have put my name on the list and gone too. I would have screamed about it for a night and a day, and been sick, and trembled, and then walked right into it with my eyes open, 'through the doors to endless night'. Because everyone knew by that point where those trains were going.

If there had been no other way on earth, I would have gone too.

Isn't having children about never leaving them, or did I miss something?

Anyway, those ten thousand children under the age of nine? They got a meal of soup with potatoes and horse bones. They got packed into rolling-freight cars and they went to Treblinka. Oh my G-d what the FUCK.

Without their parents. Their parents lived. For a time, and for a given small value of 'lived', which was really rather dasein ohne leben, I hope. I hope they scorched in their misery every night; I hope their despair drove them insane. Every last one.

Because if the parents of ten thousand children fought with their bare G-d-damned hands, something would have changed.

I'm not saying that from the comfort of hindsight. I'm just saying it. How could they have believed this man, and deluded themselves, and let their children go? These were intelligent, thoughtful people. They had knowledge enough to make other choices, even poor ones. And they just, they went along, they went along.

"Brothers and sisters, yield them to me! Fathers and mothers, give me your children!" **

No.



**Zelkowicz, Josef. Journal for September 4, 1942. Lodz Ghetto.

When you see this, post a bit of poetry in your own journal.

from Helen In Egypt, Eidolon, Book 3


Did her eyes slant in the old way?
was she Greek or Egyptian?
had some Phoenician sailor wrought her?

was she oak-wood or cedar?
had she been cut from an awkward block
of ship-wood at the ship-builders,

and afterwards riveted there,
or had the prow itself been shaped
to her mermaid body,

curved to her mermaid hair?
was there a dash of paint
in the beginning, in the garment-fold,

did the blue afterwards wear away?
did they re-touch her arms, her shoulders?
did anyone touch her ever?

Had she other zealot and lover,
or did he alone worship her?
did she wear a girdle of sea-weed

or a painted crown? how often
did her high breasts meet the spray,
how often dive down?

-- H. D.

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