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Kremenets in Poetry

The days are gray, the days are long– the wings of night cover me with peace. My heart weeps for my Kremenets, for my Jews. I mourn their lives, their deaths, their awaited hour! Often they visit me in dreams and often I visit them. They look at me and say hello and are extinguished like stars that are there and cannot be seen. In their eyes no joy, in their eyes no tears. I speak to them, but my words miss their ears. They are all young– and the old have not aged. Their tongues are tied like a stack of golden sheaves. I say to them: “Itsik, Leybish, Gitel, Yakhed, Don't you know me?” They turn their deaf ears to me fearlessly and ask, “Why are you here? Why?” My town of Kremenets is like one washed out by a flood, the air cuts with knives through the blue mist. Ukraine!–the land of picked pockets, historically murderous land of Hetman Chmielnicki. . My millennium–old town of righteous Jewish faith: The poorest of the poor lived with their God. For dreams, for hope, for godly striving– you have been sundered, you ceased to exist.

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Spring on “Sheroka Street,” going out on Sabbath night With young men and women at a cherry blossom festival. My town in the valley, surrounded by hills and farms, as if in conference, where they put on Goldfaden's “The Witch” at the student ball. Ah, the Hotel Bona is where I left it. Through the windows of the Balnitsa the wind howls. Since I have left them, no one notices me. I see: In the Great Synagogue the multicolored windows play with sunbeams. The high fence surrounds the cemetery. Brides in modest veils– The cantor's prayers everywhere. Now the molasses runs like an overflowing wine cup with white chalk and washed–out yellow lime, like Marc Chagall's musician on Jewish roofs– from such distant paths I return home. On R' Yitschak Levinson's cottage hang yet the banners adorned idealistically for a national parade. On the fences the hens cluck from behind the town center from the facade of Kremenets. Lanovtsy and Katerburg Leverant say the afternoon prayers in the field and turn up as guests at our inn. Market days: wandering businessmen flour merchants, and hog dealers– money–making concerns reserved for weekdays. Shabbos. The homes are washed with white lime. In the Kazatski Study Hall, Moshe–Chayim the cantor sings with the burning lights. People and God united in love and like lovers are they restored. Now eternal winter reigns. The white snow sleeps on the straw–covered roofs. Alone brother Yosel hangs in the non–Jewish cemetery, and there is no “Jew–boy” to cure a Sabbath gentile. Shadows surround me, wrap me up as if in a prayer shawl. In my nightly rambles I find a friend in an old stone. Our neighbors ask whom IU seek, and I respond to their question, “I seek God, only God! …”

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The great day dawned with ruckus and despair. Kremenets, our little town, prepared for the yearly fair. The town had prepared feverishly a long time for its fairs. – A trifle–a game, the treasures that it bears! There's whisky and there's herring, there are ribbons there and sweets, boots are there and buttons and pots of colored beads. The fair in Kremenets lasted many days and drew a large and raucous crowd that flooded the highways. The cows and sheep and horses all made their livestock sound, mixed with sounds of beggars who sat there on the ground. And kosher Jewish clothing Side–by–side is fused with unkosher goyish bodies In wool and linen mixed. It's the yearly fair in Kremenets– its attendees far from few. The Jews are all so busy with their visors work askew. There stands an eager Jew and bargains with a goy. He fiddles with his sidecurls and says in tones not coy: “Look here, dear little father, how much for all your wheat? A ruble? No?” He lays out funds but still fears a defeat. “Nu, Milo, what… Have we a deal? Let's cut the price right now. It's not worth more–you get my drift– Wheat's worth less than a cow!…” Then he goes to another stall where a cow lies in the hay. He touches its brown hide and starts to have his say: “Fifteen?! you ought to be ashamed by the cross you find so sweet. What could be going through your mind? A cow's worth less than wheat!” It's fair time in Kremenets, in that precious little town, where poverty and Yiddishkeit live kosherly as one.

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A Greeting Tell, tell, you see, I don't cry. My eye is blindfolded my heart's a stone Tell… I will, I will in your words find the gardener from my past. A fence a prayer house…interrupt me– Now the graves stand open and from the pit the heaven escapes, interrupt me– my first joy remains there and will never again return. Tell, tell, you see, I don't cry. In black graves lie bones not covered by earth. And from the pit, and from the bones no paths lead to anyone as if the town were dead. Tell, tell, through your words and return to those places with a shaky step. I return here, here, from where there is no possible return, where the road ends. Tell, tell, you see, I don't cry. Tell, tell, you who asked me about those bones in the pit. And perhaps…They beg pardon that I live, that I remain, I, one person from the town? Tell, tell, you see, I don't cry, the heart is like a tombstone–strong, fenced in with barbed wire. My Jewish Child The full light of the whole expanse The full joy windblown on the silk of grass, of the play of beams, unstained, without sun, for you, child, for you, Jewish child. As in eyes, in yours should shine the shining in a joyful color. But what if you understood the last scream of your mother and it screams in you? My hands will be empty, like a bare desert. I will no longer need light. I must be your pain and woe, Child, my Jewish child.

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Nachamu [“Be consoled,” from Isaiah 40:1] In the hot nights, awake at night, I say to myself: be consoled. I rub my hands, and I beg for mercy: Don't rip up my body in bloody dreams. Awake at night with eyes shut I seek you, I call you, my tortured one. Awake at night, offer me no consolation: I am the pain, I am the reproach.

A visit to the Kremenets mass grave in 1961 The photo was contributed by Munye Gindes of Israel (the last one in the photo).

Among the green hills of Volhynia– That was my shtetl's site. Of those there born, the best we mourn– their memory will always shine bright. Oh, Kremenets, Oh, dear home town, such grace pervaded thee. Oh, Kremenets, always loved, our ancient home, Wherever I am, you accompany me. The green hills crown you, the woods adorn you, with crystal springs galore– Your dear panorama, Oh, Kremenets, my mama– your enemies soaked you in gore. The souls and trade halls and parents' four walls– all is blood, is gone. The Nazi–Germans reviled, with them be never reconciled– Forever–this have I sworn. I remember a night and many like it; restless nights of thievery and terror, nights filled with terror and chaos, people plundered by the light of dawn, Three, six, and even seven times.

I remember a night: So young, so very young. – The room is hidden in sleep, the sky: a radiant sea with little boats floating away, away to the dawn… a beautiful layer of moonlight diffuses showers down From its mistress. I remember the night so blue and gray– Like all late summer days before dawn the streets in sleep, delicious sleep in the lap of my warm and bold Volhynia . But winter suddenly began to play with a sharp blast, like a sword in the night and did away with the town–awakened… I remember the night: So hot, Guarded. Its mountains surround it as if distraught, staring like golems and silent as fools. They have dragged people out of their beds to somewhere behind the town, behind the hills… By the light of the moon a pale mother wrung her hands with a groan: My only provider is away, how bitter. Woe is me. There is no end of evil.

Between mountains and valleys studded with woods and rocks, little Avrahams and Moshes lived, Brayndils and Feygeles, with Jewish grace. Now that was a town, more beautiful than beautiful! Then came the foe of the Ten Commandments who silenced the Song of Songs and the praises of God. Still hovers their tune, the melody of the Torah, our unique inheritance: which helps us to live, to build, to fight fearlessly Honor to you, our heroes! We remember you, beloved. The murderers' guilt we will never forgive.

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There were times, good times, you remember them, when a seven–page letter would come from our old home. Impatiently we waited for the familiar hello that comforted us, that cheered us beyond its simple words. Every hour seemed like a year, a day seemed like eternity when a letter did not come. Has something happened, God forbid? But suddenly the sun would shine and flowers smelled superb; the birds in cages sang out that good news had arrived. The ringing of the bell is like a song Sung in the purest tones when they follow the tread of the blessed postman. The letter brightens up the room, laughter mixed with tears; then silence falls as if it were a sacred time. Mama wrote the letter, making us remember, so we read it seven times with eyes full of tears. Our father took the letter to the old post office with red and dripping eyes and put it in the mailbox. Through hills and valleys would we go not fearing fiery flames just to see them one more time, to be with them just once. But that is not our fate To share in so much luck, to see them with the children or the grandchildren. The beasts of the Third Reich tore them from their cage, burned then, bet them, cut them off without mercy, without conscience. The fires spread so quickly from the west far to the east and among the smoldering towns, so, too, burned ours. And the two–footed beast strides and scatters fiery sparks; half the world is destroyed, until… until eyes fill with blood. Now the sun no longer shines for us, and wilted now the blooms. The birds in their cages are silent: from home no more letters will come. Nothing more will we receive. Our old home is destroyed. No letters will arrive from there, and futile it is to wait.

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