First Prize - Monika Dziwisz

We Cannot Forget

Remember those wartime years?
They’re distant
Yet still live on.

Remember Hitler?
An evil man
Of great and destructive power.

Remember the extermination sites?
They’re now veiled in the fog
Of indifference.

Remember the Warsaw Ghetto?
A handful of people
Determined to fight
For their dignity?

Remember the man
With the armband
Of destiny?

Remember the sacrifice of Korczak, *
Who would rather lose his life
Than abandon his great little heroes?

The world hungers for people
Able to listen to their hearts
Brave enough to stand up for the oppressed.

And I ask
Why there’ve been so few of them
Why?

Yet to those who’ve dared
To feel for the suffering
And to God above
Glory.

The remembrance of those days
Will last forever
And never will we forget
The meaning of the Auschwitz chimneys
The mass graves
And the tragedy of the Jews.

Let the remembrance of those years
And the Nazi Holocaust
Remain in our memory
To be a reminder of the human right
To live in freedom
In a free country.

* Korczak, an educator, refused to abandon his orphans in the Warsaw ghetto and, presumably, died with them at Treblinka

Second Prize - Tomasz Skiba

The Final Solution

As Grandpa spoke to Roman:
All the neighbors were Jews
I remember before the war
here by the forest behind the hill
lived Abram who in September
lied down “on Bzura” *
then Jakob who was eaten by the worms
when at dusk he was shot in the Russian forest
On the other side Mrs. Goldblum
she fled to Cracow
but ended up in Plaszow
her younger brother
he went to Shindler
and then on to Israel ...
There was little Helen with them
whose head was struck with a gun
Old Mrs. Goldschtein, this one
went directly to the gas ...
In ‘42, friends from my former class, Danka,
children with payos went to Majdanek
then Hitlerssons took men from the whole town
in order to drive the carts and gather the gravestones,
to build a road from the matzevot, so that they could go to “Ivan”
When the Russians came, no Jews were left
only homes, only walls...

The synagogue, during Stalin was a cinema
I saw “Potemkin” there
but now the rabbi is gone …
as I sat thinking one night
Where are all the people I have known?
Where have they buried Aaron
with whom I played hide and seek?
We were happy here
maybe it was all a dream
maybe it was never here
it was only a mirage
now it is strange here
now it is naïve here
Where are all the Purim songs?
Where are all the burial cries?
Everything has flown away
Turned to smoke, gassed,
rotting in the ground
I'm still here
telling stories to my grandson
and he's listening, listening …
He thinks it is just Grandpa's stories
only tales
He can't imagine
how half the city can be lost
like nuts in a rat hole.

* Bzura – battle in September 1939 between Germans and Poles

Second Prize - Estera Noemi Szymańska

Everyone should remember ...

Panorama, Information, News,
“He who saves one life – saves the world”
MEDAL! - given for Help
Courage Openness Compassion
For what is now normal,
everyday, common,
Then was Prized and Rare

People remember, appreciate,
Would like to forget, but as
Warning,
they Remember
Every one should remember

A small girl who was forcibly locked up
in a strange place, built of
impenetrable walls, made of bricks,
with bad People watching the gates

A man, not anticpating his end,
struck with Death's breath

A boy with dreams, passion.
working for the Butchers

Bands with Star of David

Persecuted, Murdered,
Their laws taken away – MILLIONS
in the Inhuman cause of One
“human” with Bigger aims

Everyone should remember, know

About piles of small shoes, Stolen
from Harmless feet

About land filled with Suffering
watching Death
Death – Frightening

About barbed wires

Everyone should remember and
not let what happened happen
NOT LET “History repeat itself”

Everyone should remember, learn,
Find out

Everyone should remember ...