Mindfulness and Clarity of the Holocaust
A poet captures the experience of a traumatic past so we can move more wisely into the future.
Holocaust remembrance 2025
To commemorate the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and the millions of others whom the Nazis persecuted, the United Nations General Assembly declared January 27, 1945, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Remembering history poignantly and accurately is essential to help prevent falling into the same traps and repetition of behaviors and folly that lead to hatred, division, war, atrocities, and inhumanity, where ruthlessness flows from power, the need to dominate, and greed.
The Holocaust was the World War II genocide of around 6 million Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution during the Holocaust era—estimated at 11 million deaths in total.
Between 1941 and 1945, in German-occupied Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews in the 1941 to 1945 period—around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The mass murders and policies of ethnic cleansing and extermination were carried out in pogroms, shootings, gas chambers, and gas vans in German extermination camps like Auschwitz, Bełżec, and Treblinka.
An enlightening trip and meeting with the reality of the past
Many years ago, I visited Israel and met a family member, my mother’s cousin, a poet, and a Holocaust survivor. Iren Steier, who immigrated to Israel after World War II, gave me several poems written in her native Hungarian. The poems captured her personal, tragic, and traumatic Holocaust experience. When I returned to the States, a language professor translated Iren's poems from the original Hungarian.
The poems were written at the time of the Nazi German invasion of her hometown in Hungary. Iren was one of the few in her village and family that survived the Nazi concentration camps and lived to write about the ordeal and tragedy of what happened. Her poems were written - from 1944 to 1945 - during her last days in her native town of Nagyvarad and as a prisoner at Auschwitz. The poems give a poignant reminder of what is the fate of a democracy that evolves into a brutal, totalitarian, fascist government.
Her poems of the time are shared, as Iren would have wished, to remind everyone never to forget and always be watchful for any movement toward hatred, division, and violence. Several of her poignant poems personalize this tragic part of our collective history and its relevance for today. To honor her memory and this Holocaust Memory Day, please read Remembering the Holocaust—https://www.inmindwise.com/p/remembering-the-holocaust
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I just started reading the poetry you referred to.
Before I started to read the poems, I doubted that I would like them because they had to be translated from Hungarian. In the course of translating a poem, the meter, the rhyme and the lushness of the choice of words can all be lost
However, these poems have powerful content that makes them great. I only wished I spoke Hungarian so I could hear the poems as they were written.
Some of the imagery really floored me. Consider this, from the second poem:
"My mother's answer: Dearest child! I tear out my heart and put it in your little hand, That you shall feel its eternal throbbing, That the mother's heart will never cease!"
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