Nobody understands this

Some of the material for this poem was found in the Jewish Museum in Kerch and also in 'The Book of Sorrows' by Gitel Gubenko, whose parents were shot at Bagerov Ravine in 1941.

 

 

At Bagerov Ravine rain spits at us

we do not turn away

houses like eyes stare across the broken road

we know what they have seen

 

There was nowhere to hide

when gunfire lulled them to sleep

and a father driven mad cried out

Run, my children, run

 

I saw it all, wrote Soviet poet Ilya Selvinsky

Seven thousand souls in that wolf pit

the soldiers gone for vodka

spent cases like signs upon the ground

 

Two kilometres of frozen blood

naked in the bitter wind

at the docks cranes hung limp with shame

the register guards their names

 

Gubenko Nison – office worker

Gubenko Rakhil – housewife

Gubenko Sima – dressmaker

Zolotaveskaya Klara – disabled

 

No-one was forgotten for destruction

the family Pesiah

the family Vishanevsky

the family Bistrisky

 

Kerch the Hero City twice beat them back

blood ran through the Straits

red like iron riveted to the ships

April 8th 1942 the Crimea declared Judenrein

 

No-one is forgotten

nothing is forgotten

the family Pesiah

the housewife Rakhil Gubenko

 

© Miriam Halahmy