Remembering
You were a deep mid-winter baby, Harry,
Born in Vienna, the home of art and culture,
Just two years after Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch.
But there was nothing to worry about
In those early years before memory,
When your mum and dad held you in their arms,
In mid-winter afternoon twilight –
Until the Wall Street Crash and depression
Meant the resurgence of fascism,
Militarism, the Third Reich,
Lebensraum, and a Greater Germany,
With a visit to Vienna from Hitler
(The city-birth of his fascism),
After Anschluss in 1938;
Then your childhood would prematurely end:
Segregated schooling; Kristallnacht –
Your father’s business looted and ruined;
Your dad arrested; your family evicted.
Unable to escape the Nazis,
Your dad will die of a heart attack,
Your mother will be transported to a death camp,
You and your sister will get to London
Through the kindertransport …
And now, Harry,
When you sit back in the chair and reminisce,
In the twilight of a mid-winter afternoon,
There has been so much more to your life
Than that childhood trauma, tragedy and heartbreak;
There is so much to recall with gladness …
But how can one forget?
And so,
When the clock ticks its way through the night,
You remember those days with crystal clear clarity,
Then speak to schoolchildren with eloquent power,
So that they never forget the Holocaust,
But speak of it, and remember it,
All the seasons’ days of their long lives,
While back home in Vienna,
People walk the busy streets,
Where memorials mark the pavements.
EDUCATING
It was a dull autumnal sort of day,
Leaves falling in far more than the ones and twos,
When some seventy students gathered
To hear Mr. Bibring speak of his past.
The register was politely read: children’s names
A faint echo of a Kindertransport rota;
Mr. Bibring was introduced,
The audience applauded,
Harry apologised for forgetting his memory stick:
‘I have done over 500 schools.
You have the doubtful privilege of being the first.
Without a memory stick.’
But with Harry’s charisma and charm,
Who needs a memory stick?
This wild swimmer and speed-skater across the ice,
‘In the mid-winter season’,
This hypnotic story-teller-historian,
Mesmerizing his audience with the drama,
Imagery and memory from the days
Of ‘Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer’:
‘I can hear those voices till this very day’,
A magician conjuring with Time,
With voice, words, tone, cadence and eloquence:
Mum and dad and Gertie and Harry
Sitting around the dining table,
Father crying and sobbing his heart out,
Right there in front of our eyes,
Until they disappeared, one by one,
Leaving,
Harry,
Alone,
Right there in front of our eyes,
A magician, conjuring with Time …