My Home at it was
once upon a time

By Shmuel Goldwasser
Ramat-Gan, Israel, 1966

In honor of the “kedoshim” of my “shtetl” Klimontow

“And all the sons and daughters got up to find solace and commiserate together”

(v-Ishev Lamed'Hai)

Jacob says to his sons…
do you know the place of any remains? That I can find solace by bringing it to burial.

What does the poem tell us?

I do not intend to honor what "was", but I do want to show the "shtetl" maybe, just as it was left.

Now that we enjoy a higher standard of living, maybe we can look at our prototypes as comic-tragic that even get us to smile. The poem will take us through the neighborhood that we once lived in and were fully integrated into, a part of it. The honoring does not aim to serve history. Neither is it meant to compete with the sifrei-zicaron where everyone, living in Israel, and coming from different places, describes and emphasizes the destruction of their own communities. The poem and the little pictures gives us a chance to miss those who are far away in the past yet still with us, at every opportunity, "both in happiness and sorrow" we feel that they exist and are alive as they were then.

The author

The Synagogue

Klimontow -
My home as it was,
Once upon a time

Do not believe what is said.
Why shed tears?
The ones you mourn,
You can see and hear.

Wherever I go
And wherever I come,
We are together
For they surround me.

Not only in dreams,
When awake, also,
They say "shulum"
And smile.

I see them at home,
On the street
Teasing one another
And joking.

I see them in the stores,
Also at the stalls,
I see them, everywhere.
From far and miles away.

There they sit, the idlers.
In wagons of the goyem.
The bundles in between the ladder,
Protected from the rain.

Blessing the moon

« Previous Page

Next Page »

This material is made available by JewishGen, Inc. and the Yizkor Book Project for the purpose of
fulfilling our mission of disseminating information about the Holocaust and destroyed Jewish communities.
This material may not be copied, sold or bartered without JewishGen, Inc.'s permission. Rights may be reserved by the copyright holder.

JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material for verification.
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.

Klimontow, Poland Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page

Yizkor Book Director, Lance Ackerfeld
This web page created by Osnat Ramaty

My Home at it was once upon a time

In honor of the “kedoshim” of my “shtetl” Klimontow

My Home at it was
once upon a time