Photo: Marilyn Herman 2018. Angel – from a monument in Chomutov for protection against the bubonic plague.
In April 1945, my father, Abraham Herman (aged 14), and his brother, David Herman (aged 18), were prisoners on a forced death march from Rehmsdorf to Theresienstadt. When they crossed over from Germany into the Czech Sudetenland, in the town of Chomutov, Czech bystanders were throwing food to the prisoners, but there would be such a scramble, the bread would break up, and nobody would get any. (I have very recently visited Chomutov, and interviewed some people who lived through WWII. They informed me that during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, ethnic Czechs and ethnic Poles were effectively subjected to a policy of slow starvation – with food rationing enforced to a degree that it was not possible to live on the rations alone.) The German guards threatened to shoot anyone who gave the prisoners food. One heroic, defiant young woman ran inside the line of prisoners, placed bread firmly into Abraham’s hands, and as she ran back out, a German guard smashed the butt of his rifle down on her head and she fell. In all likelihood, she never got up again.
I am composing a work to commemorate this unknown Czech heroine. I was scouring poetry and psalms for words, and even ordered an anthology of Czech poetry with translation. Finally, I decided to use my own words:
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The Angel of Chomutov
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To risk your life
to give bread
to a suffering child
Not knowing if he would live
another hour
another minute
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To give your life
not knowing
if all he would live to know
was that you risked your life
to give him bread
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Most precious of gifts
More than all the garnet of Bohemia
all the gems of Moravia
Your bread – bestower of life
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To risk your life
not knowing
that the last thing you would do
would be to give bread
to another woman’s starving child
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To give your life
to show a tortured child
Life almost extinguished
by forces of darkest destruction
To show this captive child
the precious value of his life
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Photo: Marilyn Herman 2018. Chomutov
Marilyn Herman 