In old Ommen up I grew
and my familiar straight road to school
split the cemeteries of christian and jew
school-side one, the other with shops for cheese and tool
The mortuary was there, sort of in between,
and Bert-Jan’s dad was the boss,
glimpses of funerals I’ve often seen,
but no family seemed to use Hebrew in their days of loss.
I knew of the murder in the war,
but not why no Jew claimed his rights there anymore,
not who had died, and who moved and where or wherefore
I just sensed an unhealed wound, and felt sore.
I learnt that “Ommen” stood for Erika, a hated name is it,
with guards trying to annihilate all of the Jid,
more completely than Auschwitz with their bodies did,
it’s a camping now, where in summer the tourists sit.
When the brave Manitoban men from noble Canada set foot,
in the liberated Ommen, they had paid for in blood,
three hundred Jews there could share that victory of “good”,
but of the Ommer kille, just three siblings could.
The Jews had lived there for a century or two
participating in everything, coming everywhere,
not in government, but one can want too much too
with the Supreme Court’s president giving Jewish care
Say Haman, say Hitler, say the most cursed day,
the worst killers of the Messiah’s flesh and blood,
rode their horses on 1940’s tenth of May
and there was nothing the little kille could
Oh, they tried to flee, they did,
but the Reich was so near and safety so far
for the running Jid
and the road was no more if there was a car.
They could not reach a place of peace
and no time of Allied Victory
They would be helped to kosher cheese,
but not to continuation of their history.
And see, how strange, now these demons did not kill,
the devil promised the keeping of life and good to all,
“If you don’t fight me, not harming you in this land I will”
but this word would not stop the kille’s final fall.
And after this day the yeast ran out,
no matzes now they could not go,
but all was bitter in this new land of the Kraut,
how much so, they could not know.
And well, the war went on in another land,
Jakob de Levie, had been part of the force that fought,
a soldier, he could fight, but was not in command
returned the butcher’s son, to the kille, already captured and caught
The first step of the many,
in the Air Guard not a single Jew,
thank you, De Levie, De Levie,
Van der Hoek, De Lange, I’m sorry but you already knew.
And in the fall of that year the churches start protest,
it helps a bit, but the crooked cross will say;
“We let you your old converts, if you shut up about what I do to the rest”
To kill the many, it leaves a few just for another day.
In the first month of the new year,
Jews should betray themselves, or spend five years in goal,
Thirty-one of the kille, and in perhaps greater fear,
fifty-one refugees on the Quakerschool
The enemy allowed the Nation less and less,
and Jewish fear grew more and more,
He told he hoped no disasters would come in his adress,
but the greatest was still for him in store.
They took the radios, from De Levie and De Haas in April,
the Cohens had theirs already sold.
In July the Jews lost the right to go where they could, still
and at the borders that should be told.
Since June no shop could be open on the week’s start.
In August there was a marriage in the kille, the last,
Maurits and Josephine, death would not take them apart
but it would come much too fast.
And then, the six Jewish children were sent from school,
and still they had rights on some education,
why, I think it was just to fool
and let the Jews some hope, till they reached the final station.
In March father and son Godschalk came back by train,
they had brought their wives
and would play a lethal sort of hide-and-seek to retain
of all they had, just their lives.
At the end of April Nine-Teen-Forty-Two
thousands of stars appeared on the street
the time for these has been, they have to go,
one line they are from Death, was for the wise to read.
“So de Levie, you have to go on foot?”
When cycling was taken De Levie cauld still talk
“Yes, but that’s not that far from good,
as long as they let us walk”
Too soon they took his butcher’s shop
he could no longer visit any non-Jewish man,
all professions they did stop,
a ragman, that’s all a Jew still can.
In July the trains to Auschwitz did start,
among the first, those converted to the church of the Pope,
strongest lifeline of Christianity, chosen smart,
turned out to be a hanging rope.
In August the Hamans want the lists
of the kille and whoever else there is of the Nation
Gompel and Jacob de Levie had, for the sadists,
to list themselves in preparation
The Frisian Wite Peal was a work camp for the people of the book,
it took Hartog de Lange, Maurits Bierman,the new groom,
Jacob de Levie and Hartog de Levie, along with Joseph van der Hoek,
into the first and least of the camps of doom
It was Friday Evening, October Two,
a telegram came to the chairman of the local Judenrat,
in the year Nineteen-Forty-Two,
after eight was that
Gompel read that he should say
all the Jews to pack
he thought this was Hitler’s way,
so illegally he went around the back
To Stappenbelt he told
that though he could not go in the street
the Jews had to know what the cable hold
but none realized it was resistance they did read
Willem Stappenbelt, nineteen years old,
brought the cable to every Jew,
First to De Haas, the last of them went into hiding after being told,
parents with Schuldink, Martha under the floor with Reformed pew
Those hours under, blood curse, church-floor
in dark fearful shabbos night
in terror of what the future held in store,
second after second filled with fright
This evening driver Bouwhuis brings unknowing a truck to the town hall,
is asked by a man from town: “Do you have to bring away the Jid?
A telegram arrived,” how he knew, Martha worked in post office, after all
“Some Jews already hid.”
The police told Bouwhuis he could go,
and he told police what he had been told,
the cop not silent to enemy, oh no,
and to avoid arrest Bouwhuis had to join the Jew-hunting fold
Van Gelder hid too on this terror day,
even tough they were then not be taken,
as only ragman in town, he could stay,
but knew all would soon be forsaken
For De Levie-van Gelder, Stappenbelt brought bread
and the Bouweind Jews, with in camp their men,
all hid, but were scared into light and death, so sad,
the fate of the captured five, five and ten
An awful officer came to De Levie in the night,
saw the cable, and asked him to explain,
From Enschede? We will visit them too allright,
Ein Judenfreund has brought it around? He’s arrested and in our Jew-killing reign.
De Levie’s house became a trap, devious as can
in which Schulding, neighbour, was caught
and came the bride Josephine Bierman,
by that officer of The Ovens, brought
She blamed herself , as she forgot in panic about the star,
for her destination, a name Willem did not know,
understandable, it was so foreign and so far,
it was, but isn’t, oh no
“Auschwitz-what is that?”
he whispered, afraid of the race of sadists
and she whispered back, answering what,
“That is the worst concentration camp, that exists”
The truck brought them away in power of the fiend
fifteen Jews, six too young for bar or bat,
fifteen Jews and a friend,
that he had to go along, all felt sorry for that.
Jews gave him money and cigs, as there was a fighting chance he had
“Sie gehen nach Auschwitz,” he was told true,
from Arnhem Willem Stappenbelt came back,
but Poland kept every captured Ommer Jew
They went in Zwolle into a Christian school on the Veerallee
from there to Westerbork, and stayed there for about a week,
to go on the train to Poland, Auschwitz, unneeded to say,
the only destination that year, you find if you seek.
From Auschwitz none did return, whether they lived for hours, or days,
perhaps weeks or even months, but death was there too plentiful in store
some still hoped, but see what Gompel’s last letter says:
“... life is to us nothing anymore.
We have nothing left to hope for”
For some months theVan Gelders stayed
were in hiding for years in Hattem,
in nineteen-forty four they would be betrayed,
on the last train to Auschwitz their enemies had them
Still the kille was not a completed kill,
to Vught, they had to go or flee
on the the tenth of April,
of Nineteen Forty Three
Families Cohen and Vomberg went just before that day
and escaped Auschwitz, that’s true,
but died in Sobibor in May
the too common fate of a Dutch Jew.
On Black Sabbath the Thirteenth of November
Washington lost to Ommen’s ground a fighter and a B-17,
a quarter past noon, seven dead, a moment to remember,
and the Godschalks had to hide in the woods not to be seen
Why is lost to history, but they walked the river along,
by anti-semitic law enforcement they were dead,
all what Nazi, looked for the fallen Yanks, their force was too strong,
and father Godschalk got a bullet through the head.
In Ommen he still is, under the Jewish cemetery’s grass
he got a sign of “war graves”, but never had a stone,
the rest of the family died in Polish gas,
and all that is left of the Godschalks are memories and bits of buried bone.
One family escaped the murders all,
their firstborn had moved away, so he doesn’t count
but commanded his sister’s night in church by phone call,
but this is the tale of their second round.
Leo and Karel, the two younger brothers
were hidden, and rumor had it they were gone
The father was ill, in Martha’s care and mother’s
and a request for an ambulance was done.
To Utrecht they went all three in ambulance car,
there he died after six weeks in hospital
free, as a Jew could be, not behind wire and bar
Mother hid there the coming days of war all
And Martha hid there, but, terrible thought,
she was betrayed and caught after ten days
and captive she was brought
to Amsterdam’s Schouwburg, hated place
Now she stood in the doors of Earth’s Jewish hell
and as so many there, she decided not to stay,
as most who stayed have nobody for their tales to tell,
she draped a shawl over the yellow star and out she went her way
In Amsterdam she stayed some days
and went to her brothers and home back
by train and bike over all kind of ways
but still she was hunted by the wolf pack
In September ’44 the Green attack the last Jewish nest,
the sister went just a little north to wait Northern soldiers free
the brothers found buried alive in “Highgraves” some rest,
but to the railroad, forced the snow them to flee
They waited ‘till April in five,
Canada came, Ally most noble of all
and see: the Jewish people was still alive,
surviving God’s people’s fall.
The Jews appeared, from holes and places,
their number greater than before,
were there free in the end of ideology of races
but just three were home anymore.
In church they thanked, led by Rabbi M. Philipson,
more than a hundred on April Seventeen,
they thanked their God, before the killing was done,
before they knew exactly what murder He had seen.
And after that the Jews went home, or tried to anyway,
to Amsterdam, to Israel, to any bloody place
they, the Nazi could not slay
stayed marked by the killing in those days.
But the kille killled he after all,
their mother came to die in six,
the shul met the wrecking ball
even its memorial is gone, left nothing, nix
No trace there, but still is the De Levie-bank
to sit and think in the green wood
who the Jews to survive it and then thank
and ask how it was and could
But that remembers just one man,
a citizen in high esteem,
know he was Jewish, how you can?
unimportant it does seem
There is not a single trace
no matter where one tred
a kille lived in the place,
but where they laid down their dead.
...
Lamentations 4: 17-19
and my familiar straight road to school
split the cemeteries of christian and jew
school-side one, the other with shops for cheese and tool
The mortuary was there, sort of in between,
and Bert-Jan’s dad was the boss,
glimpses of funerals I’ve often seen,
but no family seemed to use Hebrew in their days of loss.
I knew of the murder in the war,
but not why no Jew claimed his rights there anymore,
not who had died, and who moved and where or wherefore
I just sensed an unhealed wound, and felt sore.
I learnt that “Ommen” stood for Erika, a hated name is it,
with guards trying to annihilate all of the Jid,
more completely than Auschwitz with their bodies did,
it’s a camping now, where in summer the tourists sit.
When the brave Manitoban men from noble Canada set foot,
in the liberated Ommen, they had paid for in blood,
three hundred Jews there could share that victory of “good”,
but of the Ommer kille, just three siblings could.
The Jews had lived there for a century or two
participating in everything, coming everywhere,
not in government, but one can want too much too
with the Supreme Court’s president giving Jewish care
Say Haman, say Hitler, say the most cursed day,
the worst killers of the Messiah’s flesh and blood,
rode their horses on 1940’s tenth of May
and there was nothing the little kille could
Oh, they tried to flee, they did,
but the Reich was so near and safety so far
for the running Jid
and the road was no more if there was a car.
They could not reach a place of peace
and no time of Allied Victory
They would be helped to kosher cheese,
but not to continuation of their history.
And see, how strange, now these demons did not kill,
the devil promised the keeping of life and good to all,
“If you don’t fight me, not harming you in this land I will”
but this word would not stop the kille’s final fall.
And after this day the yeast ran out,
no matzes now they could not go,
but all was bitter in this new land of the Kraut,
how much so, they could not know.
And well, the war went on in another land,
Jakob de Levie, had been part of the force that fought,
a soldier, he could fight, but was not in command
returned the butcher’s son, to the kille, already captured and caught
The first step of the many,
in the Air Guard not a single Jew,
thank you, De Levie, De Levie,
Van der Hoek, De Lange, I’m sorry but you already knew.
And in the fall of that year the churches start protest,
it helps a bit, but the crooked cross will say;
“We let you your old converts, if you shut up about what I do to the rest”
To kill the many, it leaves a few just for another day.
In the first month of the new year,
Jews should betray themselves, or spend five years in goal,
Thirty-one of the kille, and in perhaps greater fear,
fifty-one refugees on the Quakerschool
The enemy allowed the Nation less and less,
and Jewish fear grew more and more,
He told he hoped no disasters would come in his adress,
but the greatest was still for him in store.
They took the radios, from De Levie and De Haas in April,
the Cohens had theirs already sold.
In July the Jews lost the right to go where they could, still
and at the borders that should be told.
Since June no shop could be open on the week’s start.
In August there was a marriage in the kille, the last,
Maurits and Josephine, death would not take them apart
but it would come much too fast.
And then, the six Jewish children were sent from school,
and still they had rights on some education,
why, I think it was just to fool
and let the Jews some hope, till they reached the final station.
In March father and son Godschalk came back by train,
they had brought their wives
and would play a lethal sort of hide-and-seek to retain
of all they had, just their lives.
At the end of April Nine-Teen-Forty-Two
thousands of stars appeared on the street
the time for these has been, they have to go,
one line they are from Death, was for the wise to read.
“So de Levie, you have to go on foot?”
When cycling was taken De Levie cauld still talk
“Yes, but that’s not that far from good,
as long as they let us walk”
Too soon they took his butcher’s shop
he could no longer visit any non-Jewish man,
all professions they did stop,
a ragman, that’s all a Jew still can.
In July the trains to Auschwitz did start,
among the first, those converted to the church of the Pope,
strongest lifeline of Christianity, chosen smart,
turned out to be a hanging rope.
In August the Hamans want the lists
of the kille and whoever else there is of the Nation
Gompel and Jacob de Levie had, for the sadists,
to list themselves in preparation
The Frisian Wite Peal was a work camp for the people of the book,
it took Hartog de Lange, Maurits Bierman,the new groom,
Jacob de Levie and Hartog de Levie, along with Joseph van der Hoek,
into the first and least of the camps of doom
It was Friday Evening, October Two,
a telegram came to the chairman of the local Judenrat,
in the year Nineteen-Forty-Two,
after eight was that
Gompel read that he should say
all the Jews to pack
he thought this was Hitler’s way,
so illegally he went around the back
To Stappenbelt he told
that though he could not go in the street
the Jews had to know what the cable hold
but none realized it was resistance they did read
Willem Stappenbelt, nineteen years old,
brought the cable to every Jew,
First to De Haas, the last of them went into hiding after being told,
parents with Schuldink, Martha under the floor with Reformed pew
Those hours under, blood curse, church-floor
in dark fearful shabbos night
in terror of what the future held in store,
second after second filled with fright
This evening driver Bouwhuis brings unknowing a truck to the town hall,
is asked by a man from town: “Do you have to bring away the Jid?
A telegram arrived,” how he knew, Martha worked in post office, after all
“Some Jews already hid.”
The police told Bouwhuis he could go,
and he told police what he had been told,
the cop not silent to enemy, oh no,
and to avoid arrest Bouwhuis had to join the Jew-hunting fold
Van Gelder hid too on this terror day,
even tough they were then not be taken,
as only ragman in town, he could stay,
but knew all would soon be forsaken
For De Levie-van Gelder, Stappenbelt brought bread
and the Bouweind Jews, with in camp their men,
all hid, but were scared into light and death, so sad,
the fate of the captured five, five and ten
An awful officer came to De Levie in the night,
saw the cable, and asked him to explain,
From Enschede? We will visit them too allright,
Ein Judenfreund has brought it around? He’s arrested and in our Jew-killing reign.
De Levie’s house became a trap, devious as can
in which Schulding, neighbour, was caught
and came the bride Josephine Bierman,
by that officer of The Ovens, brought
She blamed herself , as she forgot in panic about the star,
for her destination, a name Willem did not know,
understandable, it was so foreign and so far,
it was, but isn’t, oh no
“Auschwitz-what is that?”
he whispered, afraid of the race of sadists
and she whispered back, answering what,
“That is the worst concentration camp, that exists”
The truck brought them away in power of the fiend
fifteen Jews, six too young for bar or bat,
fifteen Jews and a friend,
that he had to go along, all felt sorry for that.
Jews gave him money and cigs, as there was a fighting chance he had
“Sie gehen nach Auschwitz,” he was told true,
from Arnhem Willem Stappenbelt came back,
but Poland kept every captured Ommer Jew
They went in Zwolle into a Christian school on the Veerallee
from there to Westerbork, and stayed there for about a week,
to go on the train to Poland, Auschwitz, unneeded to say,
the only destination that year, you find if you seek.
From Auschwitz none did return, whether they lived for hours, or days,
perhaps weeks or even months, but death was there too plentiful in store
some still hoped, but see what Gompel’s last letter says:
“... life is to us nothing anymore.
We have nothing left to hope for”
For some months theVan Gelders stayed
were in hiding for years in Hattem,
in nineteen-forty four they would be betrayed,
on the last train to Auschwitz their enemies had them
Still the kille was not a completed kill,
to Vught, they had to go or flee
on the the tenth of April,
of Nineteen Forty Three
Families Cohen and Vomberg went just before that day
and escaped Auschwitz, that’s true,
but died in Sobibor in May
the too common fate of a Dutch Jew.
On Black Sabbath the Thirteenth of November
Washington lost to Ommen’s ground a fighter and a B-17,
a quarter past noon, seven dead, a moment to remember,
and the Godschalks had to hide in the woods not to be seen
Why is lost to history, but they walked the river along,
by anti-semitic law enforcement they were dead,
all what Nazi, looked for the fallen Yanks, their force was too strong,
and father Godschalk got a bullet through the head.
In Ommen he still is, under the Jewish cemetery’s grass
he got a sign of “war graves”, but never had a stone,
the rest of the family died in Polish gas,
and all that is left of the Godschalks are memories and bits of buried bone.
One family escaped the murders all,
their firstborn had moved away, so he doesn’t count
but commanded his sister’s night in church by phone call,
but this is the tale of their second round.
Leo and Karel, the two younger brothers
were hidden, and rumor had it they were gone
The father was ill, in Martha’s care and mother’s
and a request for an ambulance was done.
To Utrecht they went all three in ambulance car,
there he died after six weeks in hospital
free, as a Jew could be, not behind wire and bar
Mother hid there the coming days of war all
And Martha hid there, but, terrible thought,
she was betrayed and caught after ten days
and captive she was brought
to Amsterdam’s Schouwburg, hated place
Now she stood in the doors of Earth’s Jewish hell
and as so many there, she decided not to stay,
as most who stayed have nobody for their tales to tell,
she draped a shawl over the yellow star and out she went her way
In Amsterdam she stayed some days
and went to her brothers and home back
by train and bike over all kind of ways
but still she was hunted by the wolf pack
In September ’44 the Green attack the last Jewish nest,
the sister went just a little north to wait Northern soldiers free
the brothers found buried alive in “Highgraves” some rest,
but to the railroad, forced the snow them to flee
They waited ‘till April in five,
Canada came, Ally most noble of all
and see: the Jewish people was still alive,
surviving God’s people’s fall.
The Jews appeared, from holes and places,
their number greater than before,
were there free in the end of ideology of races
but just three were home anymore.
In church they thanked, led by Rabbi M. Philipson,
more than a hundred on April Seventeen,
they thanked their God, before the killing was done,
before they knew exactly what murder He had seen.
And after that the Jews went home, or tried to anyway,
to Amsterdam, to Israel, to any bloody place
they, the Nazi could not slay
stayed marked by the killing in those days.
But the kille killled he after all,
their mother came to die in six,
the shul met the wrecking ball
even its memorial is gone, left nothing, nix
No trace there, but still is the De Levie-bank
to sit and think in the green wood
who the Jews to survive it and then thank
and ask how it was and could
But that remembers just one man,
a citizen in high esteem,
know he was Jewish, how you can?
unimportant it does seem
There is not a single trace
no matter where one tred
a kille lived in the place,
but where they laid down their dead.
...
Lamentations 4: 17-19
