THE GRAYLING
Hidden Truths: Poems By Martin Freier
CHERYL FREIER
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© 2012 Cheryl Freier. All rights reserved.
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Published by AuthorHouse 1/6/2011
ISBN: 978-1-4685-2407-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4685-2406-2 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4685-2405-5 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011962343
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Contents
Prologue
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2:
CHAPTER 3:
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THE GRAYLING
BY
CHERYL FREIER
Written In Honor Of Martin Freier, My Husband: An Historical Fiction Novel Based On Happenings During World War II
Prologue
From the book: HIDDEN TRUTHS, written By: Martin Freier, who was himself a holocaust survivor. In the Prologue of this poetry book, Martin says, MARTIN FREIER TELLS IT LIKE IT IS ….
“Martin Freier is known in the Metro West Boston Area for his insightful columns and his radio broadcasts. In this book of poetry he tackles some very controversial subjects of life, death, and the Holocaust. (I_CON_X PUBLISHERS) IBSN 0-9714528-0-6
Kristallnacht
On a night in November
in the middle of the night
the sound of glass
hit the pavement,
shattering it into pieces.
“Kill the Jews,” they cried
as they broke the glass.
Above the echoes of the noise,
shrill greetings were heard
of “Heil Hitler” everywhere.
as innocent people died
that horrible night
many dreams were shattered
into little pieces.
That year
an early winter
followed November.,
Suddenly, the world became
much colder.
Over the years that followed
that night in November
was all but forgotten.
Only the wind
carefully carried
the pieces of glass
to each corner of the earth.
On each piece of glass
was a message from an
innocent soul.
The message was clear,
as clear as the morning light
that follows the moonlit night.
“Stop this hate,”
it said,
“before it’s too late.”
Though many have died,
no one paid heed
to the message carried
by the wind.
Somewhere in the mountains
covered with snow,
where no flowers grow,
the message was buried and
got lost.
No one knows at what cost.
So many years later
and lots of rain
failed to wash away the tears
and so much pain
of shattered pieces of glass
and many innocent dreams.
Mother At Eighty Eight
Though she’s lost some of her zest,
for me she’s still the best.
My mother’s smile at eighty
eight
still lifts my spirit and faith.
Gone from her face and brow
is that former glow.
Yet, it feels so good for me to know
that this great lady is still there
and on her lips there’s a prayer.
Whether she is happy or blue,
her love is so true.
Beneath her smile she hides
her pain.
Even on the days of rain
she sheds no tears
for all those bitter years
of suffering and travail.
Her lost loved ones she
remembers
in great detail.
They’ve been long gone,
murdered by the SS,
leaving no embers.
Their burned ashes
are scattered somewhere,
who knows where.
It’s so unfair
we all declare,
though some wish to deny
without seeking to know why
young and old,
mother, father, sister, brother,
and child
were dragged out
in the middle of the night,
by those ready to commit
murder.
They were
never given a chance to fight to fight
for what’s right.
Nothing’s left of their remains,
not even a trace.
What a disgrace
for the whole human race!
But for her their memory will
always live on.
Say Kaddish
For the millions
of innocent souls
lost in the Holocaust
all we can do is offer
our Kaddish, the ancient prayer
or remembrance.
More than a prayer, it is our pledge to never forget
those who committed
the heinous crime,
a crime beyond reason,
beyond rhyme.
How quickly they spread the
hatred
that destroyed
everything that was sacred.
They set the flames,
wiped out countless names.
We ask the Lord to forgive
those who cared
but stood helplessly by
when they heard babies cry.
We pray for
those who dared
to sacrifice everything they
had.
They saved as many lives as
they could
to preserve the good.
Let us pray for
those who paid
the ultimate price
to put an end to this brutality
and to bring back
the sounds of liberty.
No tears can wipe away
those memories of yesterday.
No words we can say
can erase our horror, our
distress.
Those innocent lives, their loss
and the pain
will remain,
as we cry out never again.
And yet, we must be grateful to
the One Who
was there to do
what had to be done.
The Merciful One gave us
the faith to go on.
He dispersed the Hamans
and restored justice and law.
He gave us the courage to
rebuild on the ashes of
yesterday’s sorrow
a new tomorrow.
A Speck Of Truth
The world is like a desert,
filled with sand,
Dust, smoke, and garbage
cover our beautiful land.
So many of us
scurry about in despair
and they fuss and fuss.
In this world of chaos
they’re making it much harder
for us
to find someone we can trust,
Truth is now buried beneath
the earth’s deepest crust,
residing in a secret cave.
where only the brave dare to
seek truth’s advice once or
twice.
Though truth’s treasures
offer rare pleasures,
there for all to see,
our search for truth takes more
courage
than any of us can muster.
Instead, we give up and suffer
the sting of deceit,
Unexpected defeat.
Hope
Like a tiny beam of light,
hope streams through a crack
through the tiniest pores of the
human body.
Up the blood stream
it flows through the veins
with renewed vigor,
until it reaches the heart
and our brains.
The tiny beams of hope
wreak havoc with our
imagination
that lies dormant
and helpless in hibernation.
It sets our imagination
on fire until
without explanation, pellets of
joy
and happiness spurt forth
to all our senses,
making us forget all our past
tenses.
In a world that was once sad
and filled with emptiness,
our senses
spring to life and make us feel
glad
we’re alive
as we begin to see
life’s beauty
and the possibilities for our
greatness.
Disclaimer
All events are fictional and not meant to depict any person or place.
CHAPTER 1
ACCEPTANCE OF THE WAR
Moments in time remain with us in our memories until our death. These moments are our own personal chronicle of history; and sometimes it is a happy history; and sometimes it is the story of tragedy. War with its hatreds, bitterness, fighting, starvation, bombing, fires, mechanisms of destructions and death came to our country, Czechoslovakia in the year, 1939. Moments in time changed for everyone in the world.
People in the world were shocked over the war’s beginning, but the impact of the real exigencies of the war had not penetrated people’s consciousness—for they were human and had a muted sense of reality. After all, who knew that this war was a war designed to conquer and to control the world and to be the war of all wars. The machinery of war moved quickly, capturing, evading, and prodding forward with the sound of tanks and guns, bombs, and the roar of airplanes prowling the clouds in the skies over Europe. There are those who would deny it ever happened. For those of us who were there and were hunted like animals, there is always the feeling of loss and sadness when remembering all that one experienced.
Every year since the Germans took over the country, no one could be the same. Adrenalin levels never rested. It was an instant defeat for our peaceful way of life—praying at our Temples, going to work and making a living, and for us young ones, studying in school. It affected the food that we ate, and the clothes that we wore. It affected the air that we breathed. It affected our freedom. It affected our ability to dream that life would improve for us.
As the war raged, and we marked the months of occupation on the calendar, and with an indelible marker in our minds; the longer the war went on, the worse it got—the more fierce the fighting. We knew that sooner or later the fighting would come to our town, Micholovce.
In the beginning we went about our daily business, but as the days passed my father heard one story after another about people disappearing; at first it was the businessmen who traveled from city to city who never returned. The feeling of helplessness overtook us all, but our abiding love for our God sustained us and reignited a spirit of hope somehow within us. We prayed in our homes and the prayer for sustaining life became more real day after day. We began to realize that this war was not going to go away. Many of us consulted the Rabbi of our large congregation and magnificent synagogue. He told us to stay. Every time we questioned him, this was his answer.
For the Sabbath and for the Jewish holidays, the men gathered in basements where they knew they were not followed; they said the prayers but their minds were thinking about the Germans at the same time. The prayers helped us to overcome our fears of dying and were an excellent means of defying the Germans, and this sustained us. Many people planned to conserve food and planned hiding places in order to escape from the Nazis. An extra room behind the closets was the going thing to work on. Digging tunnels from basements was another plan devised by many. Food was hoarded and buried for the day when there would be no food. Every day that we survived was a triumph. Every day was a new way of life, which was so different from our peaceful and spiritual existence.
I was certain that the animal soul within us would surface, but this was a time when we needed the combination of the spiritual life and the animal soul. Our whole routine changed. My mother no longer watched us as we left for school. We slept long hours in our beds, so that the days would be shorter. My grandfather Jacob lived with us and he always knew a nice way to say to us children, “Quiet down now”. He would always say to me, especially, “Come over and sit with me, and I will read you a story”. It would always be a story from the Bible and then we would talk about the characters in the story. Then he would fall asleep in his chair, and I would sit by his side watching him, while finishing the book.
In the beginning, the movement against the Jews in Micholovce was subtle. Lists were secretly compiled of the names of the Jews. The list made no distinction to man, woman, or child. Even a newborn Jew was considered an enemy of the state. Everything was subtle, but people who were taken away from the ghetto never returned. They seemed to have disappeared. But by chance one or two men escaped from their rapacious captors and returned to tell the truth about what was happening.
People were shattered, shaking with fear, as they heard the ominous truth about the devil, named Hitler, and his bunch of barbarians, and their master plan to eradicate all of the Jews. Jews were being
rounded up and forced to remove their clothing. They were forced to stand naked in front of deeply dug pits. With wild, shattering bullets released against them, they fell to their deaths. The soft sound of a final breath reverberating could still be heard despite the loud sound of the thunderous rifles. The very few who woke up and managed to climb through the mangled, bloody, gray-colored, rigid, cold bodies, were never able to forget the horrors of this experience.
Trembling, fear, agony, crying, the sound of wailing grief could be heard from each home in the ghetto. Some people gave up and succumbed in their own beds. Others built secret cellars. Yet, others built rooms behind secret walls. Some built tunnels. A few packed up their belongings and gave themselves a chance to make their own fate, by trying to escape. Others planned carefully, strategizing how to board a boat with an attempt to escape to the land of Israel. Some were able to purchase false identification papers and were able to cross the border of their country, beginning a new life in another city far away from their homes, and families, and businesses, and temples.
Joseph’s older brother, Samuel, approached him about money from his share of the lumber business. Joseph promised to come up with the cash to buy him out. Joseph sold what he could: a valuable diamond necklace, an heirloom pearl necklace, and took cash from a business vault.
Sam left the country with his wife and daughter with a guide as soon as he had the money. He traveled first to Casablanca, and then when he could arrange safe passage to the United States, he arranged passage on an ocean liner for the United States. He made it. He was very lucky.
CHAPTER 2:
JOSEPH’S PLAN TO ESCAPE
Joseph Freier decided to take his family across the border and to board a train to Switzerland. He contacted friends and family whom he knew he could trust and he asked if anyone knew a guide who could be trusted. One day, three weeks later, a friend knocked softly on his door. Joseph opened the door quickly and with both eyes peering at one time in every direction around his house, he let the friend in. He closed the door with a quick thrust and excused himself for his abruptness. He stood straight with the inside of the door arching his back, all 5’8” of him. He moved his right arm forward and pointed his finger towards the kitchen, and he pushed his glasses closer to his eyes.