Reisha (Rzeszow)

Yizkor Book

Second Part – Yiddish

Front of the City Synagogue

Published by the Union of Reisha Landsleit^[1] in Israel and America Tel Aviv 5727 - 1967

Translator's footnote:

People from the same town Back

[Page 376]

After a Thousand Years
by Berish Wajnsztajn

Translated by Gloria Berkenstat Freund

After a thousand years on God's eternal earth,
Neither you, nor he, nor I will remain,
And, perhaps, not the language and not the poem
Only our martyrs will remain in our memory.
And nations and generations will read from a parchment manuscript,
That in 5693 [1933], animal-like people arose;
They were named Hitler, Himmler, Göring and Goebbels
And they ignited the world with sword and sulfur
Across all nations, in every country and on every ocean.
Such a scroll of lamentation of our great kiddush-haShem;^[1]
On Poland's soil – they erected gallows and ghettos;
On Romania's soil – threw Jews on bonfires;
On Russian soil – mothers and daughters were defiled,
And in Dachau – the fathers and sons were burned.
Thus they slaughtered Jews in Warsaw, in Vienna;
In Kiev, in Vilna – and in German Berlin.
Synagogues with Torah scrolls were burned,
Our inheritance destroyed in their flames.
Lost and swollen children cried;
With Jewish patches and with dying faces.
On the soil of no one – on the roads of the world,
And on ships in the middle of the ocean – they called to God!
It will be written even only after a thousand years,
That our scroll is greater than Jeramiah's Lamentations,
Because the Jews were hung on ropes like calves;
Naked mothers stretched out on gallows.
Oh, it is not Warsaw, not Lodz and not Brod,
But the slaughtered blood of our cherished Jews,
Who were named Avraham, Shlomo, Moshe or Zvulin.
It is not Amsterdam, not Prague, not Brno,
But our pure daughters from the God of Abraham.
God, their quiet shouting to You for mercy,
Remained in the glaze of their dead eyes,
And their children, God, dug their graves.
After a thousand years on God's eternal earth,
Neither you, nor he, nor I will remain,
And, perhaps, not the language and not the poem
Remaining will be the Tanakh,^[2] the world and God
And saddest of all – our present scroll
Even after a thousand years.

Translator's footnotes:

Sanctification of God's name; martyrdom Back

Torah, Prophets and Writings Back

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