She sent me running
Out the back door to the barn.
She told me to sit in the dirty pigsty
In my white nightgown
And to be still, keep quiet.
I shivered from the cold
And the smell and fear.
After an hour of waiting,
Stephanie came to get me.
She was talking fast;
I read her lips.
“The monsters asked me
If I have a Jewish child
Living in my home.
One of our neighbors
Must have seen you,
Although you rarely go
Out of the house,
And reported us.
Why don’t they mind
Their own business?”
She’d told them a former student
Had stopped by briefly.
The secret police listened to her
And left. But it wasn’t safe
For me to be there anymore.
Two days later
Father Josef came to pick me up.
I was happy to see him,
But I was sad to be leaving Stephanie.
I hoped I’d see her again someday.
Father Josef
Told me
He had visited
My family.
He said
Mother had been ill
But she was feeling better.
Father was working hard
But he missed me.
Schatze
Still looked for me
In the woods.
Father Josef
Reached into his pocket
And pulled out
A watercolor
Painting of two flowers.
And underneath them
Clara had written
Both of our names.
We drove two hours
To a church with a homeless shelter.
A Lutheran priest,
Father Michael,
Looked after me
During the months
I spent there.
He was nearly bald
And his face was rosy.
He had been concerned
About the welfare
Of the sick and Disabled
Even before the war.
Like a growing number
Of clergymen,
He wasn’t afraid to speak
Out against T4.
At the shelter,
I watched the people around me.
They were talking about the crimes
That were being committed.
I learned things I couldn’t believe were true.
They said
Disabled children
Were being taken
Out of their homes
Against
Their parents’ wishes.
They were put
In hospitals and
Nursing homes.
They said a majority of two
Among three or four
Attending physicians
Was enough to issue
A death warrant.
They said
The children were transferred
To six killing stations,
The village of Grafeneck
In the Black Forest,
The “old jail”
At Brandenberg,
Berberg, Hartheim,
Sonnenstein,
And Hadamar.
Nobody said
Why
The doctors
Agreed
To do it.
Because nobody knew.
Dr. Bouhler
Insisted the deaths
Should be
Painless.
He didn’t want
The patients
To know what was
Going to happen.
But they died of
Lethal injection
And starvation.
I was the only young girl at the shelter
So I spent a lot of time by myself.
I worked for my supper,
Serving soup and cleaning up
The tables and dishes.
One man watched me
As I swept the large room
And made up the cots.
He didn’t frighten me.
I found him strange
And a little charming.
Because his clothes
Were rags pieced together
And he sometimes smelled
Like a wet animal,
They called him Poor Kurt.
Poor Kurt
Wrapped his dreams
Around him
Like a patchwork quilt.
He slept
Almost every night
At the shelter.
He slept all day too.
His bushy beard
Appeared to be gray,
But he never washed,
So I couldn’t tell.
He said birds
Sat on his shoulders
In the park
And nibbled
Bits of bread
Caught in his beard.
Once I saw
A fox walk
Straight through
The door.
It drank milk from
Poor Kurt’s mug.
He always
Rubbed his nose
As if he smelled
Something bad.
I pointed to his nose
To ask what it was.
He made the shape of
A building in the air
And pointed to the top,
The chimneys.
That was how
The Nazis got rid of
The bodies:
They burned them
In fiery ovens.
The death certificates were fake
Father Michael told us
A woman whose sister
Had been taken away
Showed him the paper.
It said
The cause of death
Was pneumonia.
They wouldn’t let
Her see the body.
She received an urn
Filled with ashes.
She didn’t even know
If they belonged to
Her sister,
Who was epileptic.
I was at the shelter for five months
When Poor Kurt
Shook me awake
And said, “Let’s go
To Berlin.”