Tag Archives: legacy

August 7, 2017 · 9:22 am

Forefathers

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

I tell my father that I’m working on a new poem.
I got into the poem, but can’t seem to find a way out.
“Kind of like a fart in your pants,” he says.
And I realize that my poetic forefathers were probably not
William Shakespeare and Robert Frost, but more likely
Milton Berle and Henny Youngman.

I ask him if there were any poets in our family, and he tells me
Tante Channele was a poet but nobody liked her, which doesn’t
make me feel any better.

A hairy woodpecker, with the red mark of a male on its neck,
comes to our birdfeeder today.
“Look at how bright, how clean his colors are,” my father says.
“He looks like he’s just been painted.”
And I know exactly who my poetic forefather is.

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us, poems about her family and the Holocaust.  Her recent work has appeared in The Poet’s Quest for God and is forthcoming in Forgotten Women.  Janet is currently producing AFTER, a cinematic film about Holocaust poetry.  https://www.facebook.com/AfterAPoetryFilm/

This poem is reprinted from Mima’amakim with the kind permission of the author.

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May 8, 2017 · 10:38 am

Look to the Sky

by Toba Abramczyk (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

When I was a small child, my dad, a Holocaust survivor,  used to take me over to the window and ask me to look to the sky. He would take my brother and sister and ask them to do the same thing. This happened all the time, whether it was a barbecue or a family occasion, he would take us out and say “Look to the sky.”

When I got married, he took me outside. It was the hottest day of the year, but he asked me to go out and look to the sky

When I had my first child, he said “I am not good with babies. Don’t let me hold her, my hands can’t carry her and I will drop her.”

His hands were bent and swollen from years of hard labour and butchering meat for years and years.

The day my daughter was born, there were about ten family members in the hospital’s recovery room, all waiting for a turn to hold her. All I could see was her little body bobbing up and down from person to person.

There was so much noise and laughter, but through all this hoopla, I could see my dad holding his first grandchild, tears streaming down his cheeks. He was singing so softly to her. I had never heard my dad sing. Perhaps this was a lullaby his mother sang to him. He then walked my daughter to the window and said, “Look to the sky.”

That’s when I got it, I finally got it, and I started to cry.

I was sobbing so hard, everyone around me thought I was breaking down, but my mom understood. She took my hand and smiled.

All these years, all the times we had “looked to the sky,” my dad was showing his family, everyone who he had lost in the Shoah — mother, father, sisters, brothers – he was showing our faces to them, his legacy, and now his granddaughter.

Toba Abramczyk is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her father was born in Belchatow Poland, the only survivor of seven children. His parents and two younger sisters, grandparents and extended family were taken to Chelmno. One older brother was shot on the street; two older sisters and an older brother were taken to Lodz and then sent to Chelmno in 1944. Her father came to Canada in 1956 after serving in the Haganah as a soldier (1948-1952) in the engineering corp while in Israel. Her mother came to Canada from Rovna Poland in 1930. A single parent of three children, Toba  lectures on the Holocaust, has gone on the March of the Living as a chaperone, and volunteers with various Jewish organizations. 

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February 1, 2016 · 7:13 am

Ruth Leah

by Ruthie Stolovitz (Atlanta, GA)

Regularly, I am told of the weight of my namesake. People tell the beauty of my name, the history and the reason behind my name.

Unfortunately, you died before my birth at age 68, but you continue to impact my life as if I always knew you. I hope this means our souls are connected.

The rings on my mother’s hands each hold a story of my mother’s mother and her mother, a story that will forever repeat itself with the help of my descendants.

Her Spanish-style home near the water in Larchmont, NY was where my mom and her four siblings grew up. The home can be compared to my grandmother; my grandmother no longer inhabits the home, but it is still standing tall. My grandmother’s memory will always last.

Living in Florida for the end of her life, my brother visited her as a young boy and sang “Fly Me to The Moon” during the last stretch of her life.

Eternally her spirit will guide my decisions and daily actions.

A wonderful woman and great role model, my uncle tells me. I am honored to share a name with such a remarkable woman.

Hands that are gentle, my mom would tell me the similarities between me and my grandmother.

Ruthie Stolovitz is a 9th grader at The Weber School in Atlanta, GA. She wrote this poem for an assignment in Jewish Literature class, in which students discussed how biblical poetry can function as a tribute or eulogy. Students then wrote acrostic poems, in the style of biblical poetry, in memory of family members who influenced them.

 

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