Her Story

I have never been able to tell her storySometimes it escapes me, sometimes I am not sureIt could really have happened, sometimes I readDifferent accounts of her demise, or a paragraphFrom a testimony jogs my memory and the terrible daysWhen I first heard what happened to her come back.

This much is in my blood:I was conceived on the day she died.This much is in my blood.She blew up trains.The courage came from her uplifted chinAnd the two infants she watchedDashed against the wall of their home.Avram was twelve months old and Masha was two.They too—in my blood—all that is left.

If I can write of these babies,I can get through the rest—Following her path as she escapedThe prison camp with her husbandAnd joined the Otrianski OtriadeLenin Brigade, Lipinskana Forest.I can feel her mouth, her narrow lips clampedAs she bends over the delicate explosive mechanism,Solemn as in the photo when as a childShe sat for with the rest of the choirUnsmiling amid the festive group Perhaps unwilling to be seen as just a facePerhaps destined for so much more.

There are at least three accounts of her death:The partisan Abba Kovner told me she was caughtIn a mission and hung. He looked away when he spoke,Not piercing me as always with his tragic eyes,And I knew there was more he would not say.

Another book says she lagged behind the platoonEscaping an attack, perhaps pregnant,And was imprisoned in Zhedtl.The jail was ignited, perhaps by accident,And she was just one of the victims.

When mother first told me the storyShe had just heard at the hairdresser’s,I must have been fifteen, and outragedThat she was weeping, tearsRolling down her face. She knewAll I cared for was my own life,And her latest discoveryOf the fate of her youngest sisterA disruption.But who else could she tell?

The loft in the barn, she said,They were hiding there—three women,Her husband and she. They cameAnd set the barn afire. He helpedThe women first, and his wife came lastBut didn’t come, was burnt alive.

Malcah Malcah who saved all our livesMalcah who was waiting for themWhen the ship brought them back to DanzigAfter they were barred from the Holy Land, Who found them the agricultural visas to EnglandAnd saw them off the night that Hitler invaded.

But there is no real story.All that remains is a faded snapshotA few sentences in unread memorial tomes,And me, who cannot tell any story for sure.