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    Beneath White Stars: Holocaust Profiles in Poetry
    Beneath White Stars: Holocaust Profiles in Poetry
    Beneath White Stars: Holocaust Profiles in Poetry
    Ebook283 pages1 hour

    Beneath White Stars: Holocaust Profiles in Poetry

    By Holly Mandelkern

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    About this ebook

    BENEATH WHITE STARS: HOLOCAUST PROFILES IN POETRY features Holly Mandelkern’s narrative poetry about real people from the Holocaust whom she has known personally or whose stories she has taught. Melding historical detail and keen insights with the grace of poetry, she brings to life a wide variety of individuals struggling against the horrors of the Holocaust. In these pages children are sent from home to face new lands alone, teens risk their lives to resist in ghettos and forests, prisoners rise above the miseries of ghettos and concentration camps through art, and diplomats and clergy employ their wiles to save all those they can. Brief biographical sketches, maps, and a personalized timeline further animate these courageous individuals. (NOTE: in this E-book version, the reference maps and the illustrations at the beginning of each chapter are in color.)

    Illuminated by Byron Marshall’s pen and ink drawings, BENEATH WHITE STARS: HOLOCAUST PROFILES IN POETRY opens a unique window on bright lights that shone even in the darkest of times.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHolly Mandelkern
    Release dateApr 17, 2017
    ISBN9780998498928
    Beneath White Stars: Holocaust Profiles in Poetry
    Author

    Holly Mandelkern

    Holly Mandelkern is a poet, lecturer, librarian, and educator with a special interest in Holocaust studies. Holly grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in European history and from Florida State University with a graduate degree in library science. She traveled to Poland and Israel in 1991 to study Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, and, with other educators, took classes with some of the world’s leading Holocaust scholars. Inspired by the survivor, founder, and leader of the program, Vladka Meed, Holly taught about Jewish resistance and related topics for twenty years at the Summer Teachers Institute at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida and at other locations in Winter Park, Florida. BENEATH WHITE STARS combines this history with her passion for poetry to tell the stories of those who resisted in a new way. In October 2015 Holly completed the three year intensive Twelve Chairs Advanced Poetry Course. The winner of the 2016 Thomas Burnett Swann Award, Holly has published poetry in journals of the National Council of Teachers of English, the Florida State Poets’ Association, and the Gwendolyn Brooks Writers Association of Florida. Her most recent writing appears in Yeshiva University’s Spring 2016 PRISM: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATORS, which features her poetry about prominent survivor Roman Kent and a discussion of her process of writing historical poetry. Holly speaks at many community, cultural, and religious events. After teaching Jewish Studies for twenty years at her synagogue, she currently serves on the Judaic Studies Advisory Board at the University of Central Florida.

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      Book preview

      Beneath White Stars - Holly Mandelkern

      Beneath White Stars

      Holocaust Profiles in Poetry

      Holly Mandelkern

      Illustrations by Byron Marshall

      Praise for Beneath White Stars

      Just when we think that everything has been written about the Holocaust, Holly Mandelkern presents this meditation on the subject that allows readers to feel events in a new way. Holly’s poems and lovingly rendered text take readers by the hand and in an intimate way lead us into the personal reality of each individual’s life. Taken together, these poems, drawings, and historical sketches show the reader that memory, in the right hands, is a healing art.

      —PHILIP M. SMITH, PhD, Department of History, Texas A&M University

      In a spectrum of soundings, forms, and styles, both fixed and free, we are restored the voices of man, woman, and child, multiplied by millions... In arresting tribute to the lost and to the survivors, Holly Mandelkern’s scholarship and her mastery of verse elevate for her readers and for students of the Holocaust, the hardest, and often most poignant, lessons of life, death, and life again.

      —AL ROCHELEAU, author of On Writing Poetry

      "Having spoken to numerous audiences about the horrors of the Holocaust, I was uplifted by Beneath White Stars as it reminds us of the human side of those who suffered. Through this poetry we are able to sense the life and indomitable spirit of the persecuted."

      — HENRY BIRNBREY, survivor and Holocaust educator, Breman Museum, Atlanta, GA

      The poems bring to life a chorus of varied voices portraying in fine, poetic fashion life’s lessons in survival, recovery, and redemption. Through captivating illustrations and in the minds and hearts of the reader, these powerfully spiritual voices come to life, remain memorable.

      —STEPHEN CALDWELL WRIGHT, PhD, poet and educator, President and Founder of the Gwendolyn Brooks Writers Association of Florida

      "Beneath White Stars is a marvelous, imaginative, and hallowed remembering of the Shoah that illustrates the poet’s gift for evoking the unutterable within the rhythms of loss, deprivation, and the reclamation of human dignity. This poetry, enriched by historic narratives and poignant illustrations, echoes themes of Vanderbilt University’s Holocaust lecture series, the longest-running lectureship of its kind in American higher education."

      —REVEREND MARK FORRESTER, University Chaplain and Director of Religious Life at Vanderbilt University

      "There are rare times when reading a book, particularly one on the Holocaust, one is simply blown away by its content and beauty. Such was the effect on me when I read Holly Mandelkern’s Beneath White Stars. The combination of magnificent graphics, historical background, and personal reflections in her beautiful poetry makes this a very unusual treatment of the Shoah…I look forward to sharing them at Holocaust Memorial services."

      —RABBI FRED GUTTMAN, Mid-Atlantic Regional Director of the International March of the Living and Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, NC

      Holly Mandelkern’s poetry goes to the heart of the Holocaust. Historical context and original illustrations accompanying her poems provide a unique and valuable resource for Holocaust students of all ages.

      —HARRIET SEPINWALL, EdD, Professor Emerita, College of Saint Elizabeth Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education, Morristown, NJ

      This remembrance of Holocaust victims and survivors is a stirring and emotional work. The poems inspire deep feeling in the reader, and they are matched by illustrations that give life and nuance to the stories they accompany. Overall, a profoundly moving and thought-provoking work.

      —MARGARET VICKERS, language arts educator, Winter Park, FL

      This rich collection of Holocaust poems by Holly Mandelkern serves a purpose beyond what any analytical treatment of this solemn subject can provide. The poems lend dignity to the suffering, gracing with compelling beauty the sacrifice of so many martyrs of the twentieth century’s most horrific catastrophe. The uniqueness and universality of the Holocaust can never be quantified, but the verse presented in this collection does true service to the one purpose to which we must all contribute—remembering. I have been pleased to incorporate some of this fine and emotive poetry into my online course on the history of the Holocaust.

      —KENNETH L. HANSON, PhD, Director of the Judaic Studies Program, University of Central Florida

      In the Holocaust, teachers and students seek meaning from history that defies understanding. With her poetry, Holly Mandelkern brings a unique sensitivity to this quest by restoring dignity to the lives and memories of Holocaust victims. Holly and I have been friends for decades, and I know many of the survivors she has written about with such warmth. The greatest compliment I can give is that my students and I now know them better because of her work.

      —MITCHELL BLOOMER, Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida

      Published by AlmondSeed Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

      Copyright © 2017 by Holly Mandelkern.

      For permission to reproduce selections from this book, please e-mail [email protected].

      Cover designed by Kilby Creative

      Interior layout by Matt Peters at KP Creative

      History editor: Mitchell Bloomer

      Maps by Mapping Specialists, Ltd.

      ISBN: 978-0-9984989-2-8

      ISBN for the Print Edition: 978-0-9984989-0-4

      Library of Congress Control Number for the Print Edition: 2016921396

      Portions of this work appeared, in both slightly and significantly

      different forms, in the following:

      Florida State Poets Association Anthology Thirty-Three 2015: Parallel Limbs

      Looking Life in the Eye: Poets of Central Florida, Volume Three, A Contemporary Anthology: L’Chaim and Mr. Sugihara’s Eyes

      PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators: Uprooted, as part of the essay A Portrait in Poetry: Writing from the Testimony of Roman Kent by Holly Mandelkern

      Revelry: Transported

      Through Leaden Cloud was a featured poem in the K9s for Warriors Veterans Day programs in Orlando, Tampa, and Atlantic Beach, Florida, in November 2014. The poem was set to music by composer Rebekah Todia.

      For my father, Herman Lodinger,

      of Lead Crew #20, 389th Bombardment Group, July 31, 1944

      Through Leaden Cloud

      Through leaden cloud we start the flow

      of bombs we drop to stop war’s blow.

      We mark our targets in the sky.

      When shot, we parachute—we fly—

      some burn—the lucky land and know

      we’re captive men when asked to show

      dog tag and strategy to foe.

      We give nothing away. They ply

      through leaden cloud.

      As we report to camp in tow

      to cells, we’re prisoners in a row;

      on slatted wooden beds we lie.

      From ersatz bread, death march friends die

      with melt of snow, Allies’ hello,

      through leaden cloud.

      Dr. Janusz Korczak with one of his orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto

      Beneath White Stars

      Thank you, Merciful Lord, for having arranged so wisely to provide flowers with fragrance, glow worms with the glow, and make the stars in the sky sparkle.

      —Dr. Janusz Korczak, Ghetto Diary,

      Warsaw Ghetto, 1942

      The seed of a creative idea does not die in mud and scum. Even there it will germinate and spread its blossom like a star shining in darkness.

      —Petr Ginz, Wandering Through Theresienstadt,

      Vedem, Theresienstadt, 1942–1944

      Under Your white stars

      Stretch to me Your white hand.

      My words are tears,

      Wanting to rest in Your hand . . .

      —Avrom Sutzkever, Unter dayne vayse shtern

      (Beneath Your White Stars), Vilna Ghetto, May 22, 1943

      Beyond the beds of drifting children,

      past the clouded windowpanes,

      Doctor praises Grand Designs

      of stars surpassing human stains.

      Petr tills with intellect

      Terezin’s mud-engraven ground;

      his ideas rise like shining stars

      and orbit still, afire, unbound.

      From Vilna’s silent cellared holes

      Avrom beckons God’s white hand

      to reach beneath His pearly stars—

      suspended hope in single strands.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Information

      Dedication

      Through Leaden Cloud

      Beneath White Stars

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      A Conversation with My Reader

      Departures

      Heartbeats

      The Small World of Little Fritz

      Watching Myself Watch My Son

      Crosscurrents

      I Am That Child

      Transported

      A Place for Us?

      Packing Her Bag

      Watching My Daughter Pack Her Bag

      Lost and Found I

      Praying in Pencil

      Between the Lines

      Parallel Limbs

      You Never Saw Another Butterfly

      Overdue: Book Reports, May–September 1944

      Lines in Space

      So the World Would Know

      Lost and Found II

      Standing in Blood

      Bowl of Soup

      His Overtures of Love

      Timing Is Everything

      History Lessons

      Chanka Garfinkel: Guarding the Memories

      Telltale Lines

      The Standing Prayer

      No Art

      Patzan

      Unter dayne vayse shtern: A Sonnet for Sutzkever

      Sutzkever’s Stars

      L’Chaim

      A Glezele Tei

      Lost and Found III

      Rescue

      Mr. Sugihara’s Eyes

      Kissing the Wall

      The Likeness of a Man

      A Crowd of Hosts

      Risen and Rescued

      Lost and Found IV

      Roundups

      Uprooted

      Feathers

      The Witness Stands

      Memories in Color

      Misericordia for the Last Jews of Busk, Ukraine

      Lost and Found V

      Close Connections

      Recounting

      Close Connections: 1938–1946

      An Unexpected Afterword

      Timeline: Key Events for People in the Poems

      Note about the Typeface for the Hebrew Word Zachor

      Acknowledgments

      References

      About the Illustrator

      About the Author

      Elderly man in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw

      Preface

      My father, Herman Lodinger, was sent on a death march in Germany in January 1945, but he was not sent from a concentration or death camp. He was a lead bombardier for the US Army Eighth Air Force, and his B-24 had been shot down on July 31, 1944, in the skies over Ludwigshafen, Germany. Two members of his crew were killed in their burning aircraft, and the rest parachuted into enemy territory. He and the surviving crew were interrogated and imprisoned in various prisoner of war camps. My father was sent to Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Germany, one hundred miles southeast of Berlin. He was held at this camp for British and American officers until late January 1945, when the entire prisoner population was marched out into the coldest winter Germany had witnessed in decades.

      My father rarely talked about his experience as a lead bombardier or as a prisoner of war. In 1988 Dad sat patiently for hours while I asked questions inspired by a book I had read about Stalag Luft III. He answered readily as if these events had just happened. I could hardly imagine my hardy father reduced to 120 pounds, watching his friends fall asleep in the snow, many never waking up. His account sounded not unlike what Holocaust survivors have described as their own death marches that same winter.

      In the summer of 1991 I

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