And as the world vomits up war

 *

1.

And as the world vomits up war
And retreats into emptiness,
Spring’s begun dividing

her storks and cranes among us
There’s a power in this northern migration,

Edging out fear and assent,
While out on the spring ice
A primordial evil lands in your hands

The future tense and past tense
Got stuck in the muck of grammar
The storks fell asleep in their nests
Not yet having arrived

Only the Ukrainian Army and its volunteers
are awake. In this countdown to a new era—
a baby born in a basement
will receive the holy tablets

 

2.

If only I could, like a nighttime moth,
whisper to this moment, “stop”
and reach the light, crawl behind the backdrop,
as though it had never been winter.
The moth would fly off to the muse Urania,
to a branch of Iwaszkiewicz’s pine.
The vintner is pouring the birds his wine,
growing painlessly drunk, himself.
Lullaby of winter, rock me, leave me
in a warm fur coat to write poetry,
and drive the hares from the apple trees,
so they won’t eat the shoots in their dreams,
look around at the grain, at your loved ones, at us,
let it be Christmastime again.
And after that, spring, and let us be alive,
and the moth is still resting inside my sleeve…

 

3.

Yesterday, I put on my father’s pants.
They fit me now.
I remember him well in them
around the age I am now.
Tanned. Elusive.
Or was I running slowly around him?
Tо the place where his pants were the color of coffee with milk,
and not vomit with vodka.
I always ran with a much older crowd.
Searching, I guess, for the fisherman, the amateur photographer,
the grower of tomatoes under a heat-lamp
for my Christmas-birthday,
the electrical engineer, far away
in my childhood forests,
that one, who at fourteen,
saw his first lightbulb.

 

4.

The forest is almost ours,
like the salt in the salt-shaker.
It’s calm and has no fear,
for from its mouth and eyelashes bird to bird
and ravine to ravine
nod as if to friends:
and you are glad.
Ulysses, forest, come back to us,
for my father has merged with you
and has become like you—
squirrely, snowy and avian,
if only I could send my son
your letters.

 

5.

Snow is falling on Krakow the kind
that slows your phrases and slows your actions
that slows the tears dripping from your lashes
out of wartime fear for Kyiv

Krakow’s a raincoat, a junior size,
where you’ll find yourself hidden deep in a pocket
Unharmed, and in the other side’s
despair and a pain that won’t subside.

You are Szymborska’s cigarette lighter
inside that pocket, the one on the right.
But a sea of trouble spilled out in the left,
as big as the floodplain in Irpin.

Translated, from the Ukrainian, by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk.

____________________________________

Natalia Belchenko is a poet and translator. Born in Kyiv, she is a recipient of the Hubert Burda Prize (Germany, 2000) and the National Writer’s Union of Ukraine Mykola Ushakov Prize in Literature (Ukraine, 2006). Finalist of the Gennady Grigoriev Prize (Russia, 2013), the L. Vysheslavsky’s “Poet’s Planet” prize-winner (Ukraine, 2014). Her works include eight collections of poetry and numerous magazine selections and anthology publications, both in Ukraine and abroad (in English, German, French, Polish, Korean, Dutch, Bulgarian, etc.).

Caleb and sophia

 

Imperfect by Michael Simms

 

Imperfect

Michael Simms

My native tongue doesn’t allow imperfect tense, so it’s difficult to say how something might used to happen but no more. Elizabeth used to walk among these trees. She used to walk among these trees but doesn’t anymore. Elizabeth is no more though she used to be. She doesn’t anymore but she used to walk among these trees because she used to be happy but only for a short while before she descended in despair. Elizabeth we could say used to walk among these trees because they made her happy. Elizabeth used to be but no more.

a thank you video you must see

 

I pray your family had a blessed Easter holiday. Before the holiday, both Jason and Marilis were excited to return back to their families after their extended overseas trip to Rome, Poland, and Ukraine. While on the Ukraine border, our Vulnerable People Project (VPP) team partnered with another NGO to launch a massive effort to establish seven new shelters to provide housing and food for 1,700 women and children. This is an urgent need as the recent escalation in Eastern Ukraine has filled all of the refugee camps and shelters and women and children keep pouring into Poland with no place to go. Our VPP operations are also continuing in Afghanistan. However, our evacutions are getting harder and harder to execute because of the political unrest in Pakistan. Our weekly food deliveries continue to ensure thousands don't starve. Last week, we were honored to deliver food for four months of food to more than 4,480 people. Thank you for allowing us to continue this life-saving work! Below I've included some of the most recent headlines Jason and our team have been featured in because of our Hope for Ukraine campaign. Please take a few minutes to check them out. If you can, please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to help our Vulnerable People Project raise the $225,000 we need to establish seven new shelters on the Ukraine-Poland border for more than 1,700 desperate women and children. For Them, Tiana ---- Tiana Elisara Assistant to the Founder The Vulnerable People Project & Movie to Movement P.S. - Jason wanted me to make sure to tell everyone to go out and watch "Father Stu" in theaters everywhere now. The new film staring Mark Wahlberg is exactly the type of films our team at Movie to Movement has been urging Hollywood to make for more than a decade. Looks like folks are finally listening. Now, let's make it a box office success!  Saving Lives in Afghanistan.   Our Vulnerable People Project Hope for Afghanistan Campaign continues on. Click here or below to watch a short "thank you" video our team on the ground recently made with some of those who you have helped avoid starvation this winter. Saving Lives in Ukraine.   Jason and our VPP team has been working with LifeSiteNews and EWTN to continue to report what's been happening at the Ukraine-Poland border. Click here or below to watch Jason's latest interview with EWTN News Nightly. With the recent Russian surge in Eastern Ukraine, more women and children are flooding into Poland and all of the shelters are overfilled. Our team is establishing seven new shelters right on the boarder to give 1,700 women and children food and lodging. Can you chip in with a tax-deducible gift of $250, $100, or even $50 right away to our efforts in Ukraine? Other Recent Media Coverage... The Stream: Poison-Gaslighting Ukraine, Biden Seeks a Bloody Quagmire (Jason's Op-Ed) LifeSiteNews: UPDATE: LifeSiteNews offering relief to Ukrainian refugees (with Jason reporting) Long Island News 12 TV: Brooklyn church hosts prayer vigil in solidarity with Ukraine The Tablet: Catholics Get First Hand Account on Ukraine at Williamsburg Prayer Service Jason's Podcast. Listen to Jason's regular podcast, one of the fast growing in the nation.  Listen NOW Support Jason. Jason is the founder of Movie to Movement & the Vulnerable People Project and the host of the "The Jason Jones Show." His mission to to stand with and speak for the vulnerable no matter who or where they are. Now you can join the Jason Jones Support Team by chipping a tax-deductible gift by clicking here.

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Hitler's BIrthday from https://www.haaretz.com/1.5038084

 On Monday evening, April 20, we will begin our 24-hour commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day, recalling the millions of Jews who perished in Europe between 1933 and 1945 due to the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators. That date also happens to be the 120th birthday of the man who conceived the idea of annihilating the Jewish race: Adolf Hitler.

A lifespan of 120 years is a particularly Jewish idea. It is what we wish our co-religionists on their birthdays, since that was the age reached by four most distinguished Jews: Moses, Hillel, Yochanan Ben Zakkai and Rabbi Akiva. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, 10 days after his 56th birthday.

In 1948 Israel's Chief Rabbinate suggested marking the suffering and murder of Jews during the Holocaust on the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, which also commemorates the siege of Jerusalem initiated in ancient times by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia - an event that ultimately led to the destruction of the First Temple and Babylonia's conquest of the Kingdom of Judah. This was also the date proposed for Holocaust remembrance by religious members of a Knesset subcommittee in 1951. However, the Mapam and Ahdut Ha'Avoda members of that subcommittee preferred a date marking the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, which they saw as a symbol of Jewish resistance, rather than focusing on the suffering and annihilation of those dark days.

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Thus, there was an ideological conflict on two fronts: One concerned the Jews' historical image - an effort to distance nascent Israel from its ancient forbears, the European Jews, who went, according to the terrible phrase coined then, "as lambs to the slaughter." The other conflict involved a desire to highlight the role of the Zionist left (i.e., the Jewish Combat Organization, or ZOB) in organizing the resistance in Warsaw and other ghettos, while playing down the role of Zionist Revisionists activists (the Jewish Military Union, ZZW).

There was therefore a real danger that there would be two commemorative days: one memorializing the Holocaust victims on the 10th of Tevet (when Kaddish is usually recited for all those whose burial places are unknown, and for all other Jewish victims throughout history), and another day honoring the fighters and heroes on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943. This would have deepened even further the chasm between European Jews (of whom many, religious and non-Zionist, had perished), and the Zionists, whose members had fought (albeit a losing battle), but died an honorable death.

In 1951 the Knesset suggested a date that would both commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and pay tribute to those who fought in the uprising. As all national holidays are determined in Israel according to the Hebrew calendar, and the date of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising seemed to be the more popular choice for commemorative occasion, the date should have been the same one as in 1943 - the 14th day of the month of Nissan. But since that was Passover eve, the Knesset eventually settled on the 27th day of that month: six days after the end of Passover and a week before Independence Day. Although there were those who still argued in favor of the 10th of Tevet, the 27th of Nissan became anchored in the law establishing the Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance authority in 1953, and six years later, by law, became Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day.

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Since Hebrew dates and Gregorian dates fluctuate from year to year, the 27th of Nissan and April 20th don't always fall on the same day: Indeed, the 27th of Nissan 5769 is next Tuesday, April 21. However, since Jews begin to mark their holidays beginning at sundown the preceding day (as per Genesis 1:5: "And the evening and the morning were the first day"), the two dates do coincide this year.

It is widely accepted that Nazi leaders planned the decimation of the Warsaw Ghetto as a birthday present for their Fuhrer. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica's Web site: "The Germans suspended deportations until April 19, when Himmler launched a special operation to clear the ghetto in honor of Hitler's birthday, April 20." However, many accepted truths are not exactly true.

To backtrack, the beginning of the uprising in Warsaw Ghetto was actually in July 1942, when various local movements joined forces to fight the Nazis; already in January 1943, they managed to disrupt efforts to deport 8,000 Jews to concentration camps. Heinrich Himmler visited the ghetto and on February 16 issued a directive: "For reasons of security I herewith order that the Warsaw Ghetto be pulled down ... An overall plan for razing the ghetto is to be submitted to me. In any case, we must accomplish the disappearance of the living-space for 500,000 Untermenschen [sub-humans] that has existed up until now, but could never be suitable for Germans, and reduce the size of this city of millions, Warsaw, which has always been a center of corruption and revolt."

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The Germans started the liquidation of the ghetto on April 19, and couldn't conceivably have planned to finish it in one day. (Says Marek Edelman, a Bundist who lives today in Poland, leader of one of the armed Jewish groups in the ghetto: "We didn't choose the day - the Germans set it by entering the ghetto.") At 6 A.M. that morning, Nazi troops were met by armed resistance and had to withdraw temporarily. Under SS General Jurgen Stroop, it took the Nazis more than a month to raze the ghetto. His detailed report on the operation, which is entitled "The Warsaw Ghetto is no more" - and starts: "For the Fuhrer and their country, the following [men] fell in the battle for the destruction of Jews and bandits in the former ghetto of Warsaw" - does not mention Hitler's birthday.

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On April 20, 1943, Hans Frank, the governor general of occupied Poland, wrote the head of the Chancellors bureau: "Today's session of the administration of the government general, held to mark the Fuhrer's birthday, was dominated by developments in the security situation. This has indeed developed in a most dangerous fashion as the result of various circumstances. Since yesterday we have a well-organized uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, which has to be fought with the aid of artillery."

Historian Dr. Havi Ben-Sasson claims there are no German documents from that time that tie the date of the planned destruction of the ghetto and Hitler's birthday. Furthermore, Holocaust scholar Prof. Yehuda Bauer categorically declares that any connection between the date of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and Hitler's birthday is "pure folklore."

Whatever the case, one has to admit that when we commemorate terrible events in our past, we cherish the memories of those who suffered, fought and died, but cannot help but raise the ghosts of those who perpetrated the suffering as well. On Holocaust Remembrance Day next week, as every year, the Nazis and Hitler are also on our minds whether we want them to be or not.

Hitler’s Jewish Baby from https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/hitlers-jewish-baby

i n the winter of 1935, a few months after the German government passed the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, the Nazi family magazine Sonne ins Haus (“Sun in the Home”) sponsored a photographic competition to find “the perfect Aryan child.” On Jan. 24, 1935, the magazine published a front-page photograph of the winner, a beautiful 6-month-old baby girl named Hessy Levinsons. Nazi propaganda showcased the baby as “the perfect Aryan baby.” Unbeknownst to the judges, Hessy was Jewish.

Hessy had been born in Berlin on May 17, 1934, to Jewish parents Jacob and Pauline Levinsons. The couple, originally from Latvia, where they both had studied classical music, married before immigrating to Berlin in 1928. Both were singers: Jacob was a smooth-voiced baritone; Pauline had studied at the renowned Riga Conservatory in Latvia.

Jacob had accepted a position at a local opera house and taken the stage name of Yasha Lenssen to conceal his Jewish identity, since this was a time of intensifying antisemitism in Hitler’s Berlin. However, when the opera directors found out that Jacob’s family name was really Levinsons and he was Jewish, they canceled his contract.

Without money, and living in a cramped one-room flat, Pauline gave birth to Hessy. She was so beautiful that when she was 6 months old, her parents decided to have her picture taken. “My mother took me to a photographer,” Hessy recalled. “One of the best in Berlin. And he made a very beautiful picture.”

Hessy’s parents liked the portrait so much they had it framed and propped it up on the piano that Hessy’s father had given her mother as a present after Hessy was born. Her parents thought the picture would remain a private family photo. They were unaware that Hans Ballin, the well-known Berlin photographer who had taken it, had entered the picture in a photo contest of the Nazi magazine Sonne ins Haus.

When the woman who helped clean the apartment arrived, she delivered some surprising news. “You know,” she said, “I saw Hessy on a magazine cover in town.” Hessy’s mother said it could not be Hessy. “No, no, no,” the cleaner insisted, “it’s definitely Hessy. Just give me some money and I’ll get you the magazine.”

The photograph had been selected from an assortment of a hundred pictures of German babies taken by 10 well-known German photographers. The competition had been arranged by the Nazi propaganda department headed by Joseph Goebbels, to showcase the ideal beautiful German Aryan baby. The winning baby picture would appear on the cover of Sonne ins Haus.

Ballin put Hessy’s photograph along with nine others into an envelope and sent it to the office of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. He knew full well that Hessy was Jewish. Even though the Nazis typically promoted blond hair and blue eyes as the ideal Aryan features, for whatever reason, the picture of the brown-haired and brown-eyed Hessy won.

Fearing that the Nazis would discover that their family was Jewish, Hessy’s mother informed Ballin. The photographer replied that he knew. He said he deliberately entered Hessy’s photograph into the contest because “I wanted to make the Nazis look foolish.” He explained that “I wanted to allow myself the pleasure of this jest. And you see I was right. Of all the babies, they picked this baby as the perfect Aryan.”

The magazine was one of the few publications that were allowed to circulate at the time. Edited by a friend of Nazi leader Hermann Goering, the magazine broadcast the virtues of Nazi Germany and the superiority of the Aryan race. Its pages brimmed with photos of men wearing swastikas.

The Levinsons were horrified when their daughter’s photograph appeared in its pages. Her face was plastered all over the streets, in storefront windows, and in newspapers and magazines. Hessy’s picture was later distributed on postcards throughout Germany and in the countries they occupied. Hessy’s aunt even found a card in Memel, Lithuania, with Hessy’s photo and the inscription in gold letters, “Best wishes for the birthday.”

Out of fear of Hessy getting recognized and maybe even killed, her parents hid her from the public eye. “I could no longer play in the park,” she recalls, “and I couldn’t go to the zoo, my favorite place.”

One close call occurred when a friend of the family had been visiting a German woman’s apartment and spotted Hessy’s photo framed on the wall. She accidentally blurted out, “But that is Hessy Levinsons.” The woman responded angrily, “What? Did you say the baby’s name is Levinsons?” The woman pulled the picture off the wall and pensively stared at it for a while, and then calmed down and said, “Oh, never mind. She is too cute. I’ll hang it back.”

Hessy’s parents were filled with trepidation at what had occurred, but in spite of their unease, they were also astonished at the absurdity of it all. “One time,” Hessy says, her aunt went to the store to buy a birthday card for her first birthday in May of 1935, only to find a card with Hessy’s baby picture on it. “My aunt didn’t say another word, but she bought the postcard which my parents carried with them throughout the years.”

Many years later, Hessy was asked what she would say today to the photographer who entered her picture in the contest. She responded that “I would tell him, good for you for having the courage.”

“I can laugh about it now,” she says. “But if the Nazis had known who I really was, I wouldn’t be alive.”

In 1938, Hessy’s father, Jacob, was briefly arrested by the SS on trumped-up tax charges. After this, he concluded that Germany was no longer safe for him and his family and determined to leave immediately. He took his family and moved to Latvia, his home country. After a short stay, they relocated to Paris.

At one point during their sojourn in Paris, Hessy developed an earache and her mother found a physician who would make a house call. The doctor who came was Jewish and he commented on what a cute child Hessy was. Pauline told him the story of Hessy’s baby photo. The doctor responded by pointing out that there were an increasing number of people in France who were influenced by Hitler’s propaganda. He told them that he had connections at a Paris newspaper, and believed this would be a great story to publicize and make the Nazis look foolish.

Pauline was agreeable, but Jacob said, “No way.” The doctor turned to him and said, “You know Mr. Levinsons, you have no reason to be fearful. You are not in Germany anymore.” The soon-to-be Nazi occupation of France proved the doctor wrong.

France fell to the German army in June 1940, and Hessy’s family was smuggled into the “zone libre” (free zone) in southern France. Her father struggled to obtain visas for the family to emigrate from France—they received a U.S. visa in 1941, but were unable to leave before the visa expired and could not obtain an extension.

Luckily, in 1942, the family acquired visas to enter Cuba. Hessy’s father then purchased train tickets to take them from Marseille to Lisbon, Portugal. In Lisbon, he bought boat tickets to sail to the Americas. As the family waited in Marseille, they discovered that Gerta, the young Jewish nurse the family had hired in Berlin and who had gone to Paris with them to take care of the children, was refused a visa to join her brother, who had already immigrated to Oregon.

Gerta remained in Paris. Hessy’s parents now faced a dilemma: Should they return to Paris or just leave Gerta there? Hessy’s father had no visa for Gerta and no pass for her to get back to Nice. But they feared that Gerta, as a young Jewish girl, would likely be killed. Hessy’s father then headed back to Nice, while the family waited for him in Marseille.

While on the train to Nice, Hessy’s father stayed in the dining car, believing it would protect him. He kept ordering food and wine until he was almost drunk and sick. When the train stopped for two hours at the checkpoint to enter the Vichy sector, the guards examined the passengers’ passes, but walked right through the dining car without disturbing the diners.

While in Nice, Hessy’s father had pawned his silver cigarette case and went back to the Cuban consul to offer him more money for another visa for Gerta. The consul said, “I already gave you four visas and am in enough trouble.” Hessy’s father told him that he would not leave until he gave him another visa, sat down, and waited. At the end of the day, the consul said, “I am going to close. Are you going to leave or should I call the police?”

Hessy’s father responded, “I’ll leave as soon as you give me a visa.” The consul looked at him and said, “You know, there is an old law in the books in Cuba that says a man can immigrate with all his possessions, including his slaves. Would you say this woman is your slave?” Hessy’s father said, “Of course. Absolutely. This woman is my slave.” The consul gave him one more Cuban visa.

Hessy spent much of her childhood in Cuba. In 1949, she and her family immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City.

There, Hessy Levinsons got married and became Hessy Levinsons Taft. But her father stayed behind in Havana to operate a business, which thrived until the advent of Fidel Castro, when it foundered. Hessy says that her father always said, “I have survived Hitler; I will survive Castro.” Hessy says “And he did, he did.”

Hessy studied chemistry at Julia Richman High School in New York City, and majored in chemistry at Barnard College, graduating in 1955. She worked in academia for a while until she left to raise a family, though she returned to professional life later and helped run the AP chemistry exam for the Educational Testing Service. After 30 years in the Educational Testing Service, Hessy returned to New York in 2000 to work as a chemistry professor at St. John’s University, where she studied water sustainability until she retired in 2016.

Although Hessy’s immediate family survived the Holocaust, most of her extended family in Latvia were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. When she was asked how she felt about being a Jewish poster child in a Nazi propaganda magazine she said: “I feel a sense of revenge, good revenge.”