DUGGAN
Stumble stones [1] take many forms
but serve a common purpose –
to break our stride and bow our heads
to reclaim names from Orcus. [2].
Engraved in brass and placed before
the former homes of neighbours,
whose surnames have been long erased
by those who wrought the Shabar [3],
they call to mind the ones we lost
from rolls in schools, and birthrights;
from friendship groups and drama troupes,
and children’s party invites.
And voices too can halt our step
and force a later kvelling [4] -
a story told, and names recalled
from history’s untelling.
For Shoah’s [5] goal is silenced souls -
oblivion prevailing -
and bearing witness, naming names,
drowns out the Appell’s [6] hailing.
Einsatzgruppens [7] of the mind,
a census born of hate -
hollerith [8] or judenrein [9]
proclaimed above the gate -
decency and strength of will
can rescue from the silence:
and words and bricks can each reclaim
the names excised by violence.
A book can prove a tallis [10] true,
a wimple [11] bound with pages;
inscribed and blessed, lest we forget
time’s debts, and cheques, and wages.
Set down or cast in solid brass
a liberation chorus:
and sing those names once more aloud
the nazis could not להרוס [12]
Dahlheimer, Falk, Hirsch, Marx and Fromm,
Stargardter, Heß and Weichsel;
Ullman, Simons, Moritz, Schmidt,
Rosenbaum; Garfinkle. [13]
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[1] Stumble Stones (Stolpersteine) are ten-centimetre concrete cubes bearing a brass plate inscribed with the names of Jewish victims of forced deportation and extermination, placed outside the address at which they last lived freely.
[2] God of the underworld; punisher of broken oaths in Etruscan and Roman mythology.
[3] In Yiddish shabar means to ‘break in pieces’ (in Hebrew both ‘shattered’ and ‘broken-hearted’).
[4] Yiddish word meaning to express pride in someone [pronounced (k)vell-ing].
[5] The Yiddish name given to the Holocaust.
[6] The appell was the daily roll call of prisoners in the concentration camps.
[7] The SS’s mobile death squads.
[8] The Hollerith machine (developed by the German wing of IBM) was designed to make the census of the Jews more efficient. Adolf Eichmann used it to gather data on Jews living in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia.
[9] Literally “Cleansed of Jews”, a Nazi term used to describe an area from which any trace of Jews or Jewishness had been removed.
[10] The tallis or tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl.
[11] A wimple is a linen sash used as a binding for the Sefer Torah by Jews of Germanic origin, and originally made from a child’s swaddling cloth.
[12] ‘Laharos’; the Hebrew word for ‘destroy’ [pronounced lha-rus].
[13] The Garwood family's original name.