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by Yitzhak Katzenelson The first ones to be destroyed were the children, Little orphans, abandoned upon the face of the earth; They who were the best in the world, the acme of grace on the dark earth! Oh, tender orphans! From them, the bereaved of the world in a house of shelter we drew isolation; from the mournful faces, mute and dark we said the light of day will yet break upon us! Thus it was at the end of the winter, forty-two, in such a poor house of shelter, I saw children just gathered from the street; and I hid in a corner of corners, I saw in the embrace of a nurse a little girl less than two years old, emaciated, thin, her face the pallor of death, and her eyes so grave, so serious. And I looked at her, I looked at this two year old crone; Like a grandma a hundred years was this little girl in Israel; the trouble and misery that her grandma had not seen even in a nightmare, this little girl had seen fully awake. And I wept and said to myself: Away with the tears! The sorrow will cease but the graveness will remain! The graveness will remain, it will seep into the well of the world like a prophecy, like holy scriptures - Do not cry, do not weep ... Eighty million murderers will atone for one worried child in Israel! At this station another girl I saw, about five years old; She fed her younger brother and he cried, The little one, he was sick; into a diluted bit of jam she dipped tiny crusts of bread, and skillfully she inserted them into his mouth ... This my eyes were privileged to see! To see this mother, a mother of five years feeding her child, to hear her soothing words - My own mother, the best in the whole world had not invented such a ruse. But this one wiped his tears with a smile, injected joy into his heart - A little girl in Israel! Shalom Aleichem could not have improved upon her! They, the children of Israel, were the first in doom and disaster; most of them without father and mother were consumed by frost, starvation and lice; holy messiahs sanctified in pain ... Say then, how have these lambs sined? Why in days of doom are they the first victims of wickedness, the first in the trap of evil are they! The first were they detained for death, the first into the wagons of slaughter; they were thrown into the wagons, the huge wagons, like heaps of refuse, like the ashes of the earth - and they transported them, Killed them exterminated them without remnant or remembrance ... The best of my children were all wiped out! Oh woo unto me - Doom and desolation! Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority Selected Readings for Martyr's and Hero's Remembrance Day |
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The first Ones