My father spent four years as a slave laborer in Nazi Germany, and my mother spent two and a half years there. They were two of about 12 million people who were taken to Germany to do the work the Germans needed done while their own workforce was out trying to conquer Europe.

My parents weren't Jewish, but they knew people who were. Poland was a country with a large Jewish population, and Jews had lived in Poland for almost a millenium.

Like I said, my parents knew Jewish people. Two of my mom's aunts in fact married two Jewish fellows, twins. The four of them died in Auschwitz.

Here's a poem I wrote about what my mom thought about the war and the things that happened.

WHAT THE WAR TAUGHT HER

My mother learned that sex is bad,

Men are worthless, it is always cold

And there is never enough to eat.

She learned that if you are stupid

With your hands you will not survive

The winter even if you survive the fall.

She learned that only the young survive

The camps. The old are left in piles

Like worthless paper, and babies

Are scarce like chickens and bread.

She learned that the world is a broken place

Where no birds sing, and even angels

Cannot bear the sorrows God gives them.

She learned that you don't pray

Your enemies will not torment you.

You only pray that they will not kill you.

My mother grew up in a forest in Eastern Poland in the 1920s and 30s. She could hear wolves howling in the winter, and she listened to her mother's stories and warnings and passed them on to me.

This is a poem about the stories my grandmother told my mom.

My Mother and the Wolves

In their log house in the forests

west of Lvov, my grandmother

told my mother tales in the winter

to pry her thoughts from the sound

of trees splitting with the cold,

exploding with a crack like that

of her father's double-barreled shotgun

A cat, she would say, can't be trusted.

It comes in the short spring night

and sleeps on the priest's chest

watching his adam's apple

as if it were some mouse hidden

under a blanket of stubbled skin

and then striking its sudden claws

through his skin into cartilage

And what of the wolves, she'd ask,

the nine wolves that in the winter's

grey stone dawn would smash

their bones against the door,

hammering like hungry seals

until the door splinters and the baby

is got at – even from the cradle

even from its precious sleep?

And listen, Tekla, my mother's mother

would whisper then, there are men

as bad as wolves that no door

– no matter how solid the oak –

will keep out.

So trust in Jesus

in the world of clouds far beyond

the frozen forests of this frozen world

Do this always, and fear the greedy hens.

_________________________

My grandmother was shot to death by German soldiers. They also killed my aunt and her infant daughter. My mom was taken to Germany where she was a slave laborer for almost three years.

The poem recently appeared in Main Street Rag.

I write about my mom and her experiences in my book Lightning and Ashes. Here's an amazon link to the book. Just click here.