Samuel Gottesman, A Survivor

This is the first of three poems to commemorate the survivors and victims of the Holocaust and Jew-Hatred. The episodes recounted in the poem are true.

Samuel remembers the command 
To hand over all property.
First, it was merely the store.
The products that they sold.

They had to itemize their own
Impoverishment. They took inventory:
Samuel carefully organized all the cruelties
In his head, in his cellared mind,
As his father shuffled a set of papers
And disorganized his entire life. 

II.
His father…