The Grayling Read online

  THE GRAYLING

  Hidden Truths: Poems By Martin Freier

  CHERYL FREIER

  AuthorHouse™

  1663 Liberty Drive

  Bloomington, IN 47403

  www.authorhouse.com

  Phone: 1-800-839-8640

  © 2012 Cheryl Freier. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

  Published by AuthorHouse 1/6/2011

  ISBN: 978-1-4685-2407-9 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4685-2406-2 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4685-2405-5 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011962343

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

  and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Contents

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2:

  CHAPTER 3:

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THE GRAYLING

  BY

  CHERYL FREIER

  Written In Honor Of Martin Freier, My Husband: An Historical Fiction Novel Based On Happenings During World War II

  Prologue

  From the book: HIDDEN TRUTHS, written By: Martin Freier, who was himself a holocaust survivor. In the Prologue of this poetry book, Martin says, MARTIN FREIER TELLS IT LIKE IT IS ….

  “Martin Freier is known in the Metro West Boston Area for his insightful columns and his radio broadcasts. In this book of poetry he tackles some very controversial subjects of life, death, and the Holocaust. (I_CON_X PUBLISHERS) IBSN 0-9714528-0-6

  Kristallnacht

  On a night in November

  in the middle of the night

  the sound of glass

  hit the pavement,

  shattering it into pieces.

  “Kill the Jews,” they cried

  as they broke the glass.

  Above the echoes of the noise,

  shrill greetings were heard

  of “Heil Hitler” everywhere.

  as innocent people died

  that horrible night

  many dreams were shattered

  into little pieces.

  That year

  an early winter

  followed November.,

  Suddenly, the world became

  much colder.

  Over the years that followed

  that night in November

  was all but forgotten.

  Only the wind

  carefully carried

  the pieces of glass

  to each corner of the earth.

  On each piece of glass

  was a message from an

  innocent soul.

  The message was clear,

  as clear as the morning light

  that follows the moonlit night.

  “Stop this hate,”

  it said,

  “before it’s too late.”

  Though many have died,

  no one paid heed

  to the message carried

  by the wind.

  Somewhere in the mountains

  covered with snow,

  where no flowers grow,

  the message was buried and

  got lost.

  No one knows at what cost.

  So many years later

  and lots of rain

  failed to wash away the tears

  and so much pain

  of shattered pieces of glass

  and many innocent dreams.

  Mother At Eighty Eight

  Though she’s lost some of her zest,

  for me she’s still the best.

  My mother’s smile at eighty

  eight

  still lifts my spirit and faith.

  Gone from her face and brow

  is that former glow.

  Yet, it feels so good for me to know

  that this great lady is still there

  and on her lips there’s a prayer.

  Whether she is happy or blue,

  her love is so true.

  Beneath her smile she hides

  her pain.

  Even on the days of rain

  she sheds no tears

  for all those bitter years

  of suffering and travail.

  Her lost loved ones she

  remembers

  in great detail.

  They’ve been long gone,

  murdered by the SS,

  leaving no embers.

  Their burned ashes

  are scattered somewhere,

  who knows where.

  It’s so unfair

  we all declare,

  though some wish to deny

  without seeking to know why

  young and old,

  mother, father, sister, brother,

  and child

  were dragged out

  in the middle of the night,

  by those ready to commit

  murder.

  They were

  never given a chance to fight to fight

  for what’s right.

  Nothing’s left of their remains,

  not even a trace.

  What a disgrace

  for the whole human race!

  But for her their memory will

  always live on.

  Say Kaddish

  For the millions

  of innocent souls

  lost in the Holocaust

  all we can do is offer

  our Kaddish, the ancient prayer

  or remembrance.

  More than a prayer, it is our pledge to never forget

  those who committed

  the heinous crime,

  a crime beyond reason,

  beyond rhyme.

  How quickly they spread the

  hatred

  that destroyed

  everything that was sacred.

  They set the flames,

  wiped out countless names.

  We ask the Lord to forgive

  those who cared

  but stood helplessly by

  when they heard babies cry.

  We pray for

  those who dared

  to sacrifice everything they

  had.

  They saved as many lives as

  they could

  to preserve the good.

  Let us pray for

/>   those who paid

  the ultimate price

  to put an end to this brutality

  and to bring back

  the sounds of liberty.

  No tears can wipe away

  those memories of yesterday.

  No words we can say

  can erase our horror, our

  distress.

  Those innocent lives, their loss

  and the pain

  will remain,

  as we cry out never again.

  And yet, we must be grateful to

  the One Who

  was there to do

  what had to be done.

  The Merciful One gave us

  the faith to go on.

  He dispersed the Hamans

  and restored justice and law.

  He gave us the courage to

  rebuild on the ashes of

  yesterday’s sorrow

  a new tomorrow.

  A Speck Of Truth

  The world is like a desert,

  filled with sand,

  Dust, smoke, and garbage

  cover our beautiful land.

  So many of us

  scurry about in despair

  and they fuss and fuss.

  In this world of chaos

  they’re making it much harder

  for us

  to find someone we can trust,

  though we know we must.

  Truth is now buried beneath

  the earth’s deepest crust,

  residing in a secret cave.

  where only the brave dare to

  seek truth’s advice once or

  twice.

  Though truth’s treasures

  offer rare pleasures,

  there for all to see,

  our search for truth takes more

  courage

  than any of us can muster.

  Instead, we give up and suffer

  the sting of deceit,

  Unexpected defeat.

  Hope

  Like a tiny beam of light,

  hope streams through a crack

  through the tiniest pores of the

  human body.

  Up the blood stream

  it flows through the veins

  with renewed vigor,

  until it reaches the heart

  and our brains.

  The tiny beams of hope

  wreak havoc with our

  imagination

  that lies dormant

  and helpless in hibernation.

  It sets our imagination

  on fire until

  without explanation, pellets of

  joy

  and happiness spurt forth

  to all our senses,

  making us forget all our past

  tenses.

  In a world that was once sad

  and filled with emptiness,

  our senses

  spring to life and make us feel

  glad

  we’re alive

  as we begin to see

  life’s beauty

  and the possibilities for our

  greatness.

  Disclaimer

  All events are fictional and not meant to depict any person or place.

  CHAPTER 1

  ACCEPTANCE OF THE WAR

  Moments in time remain with us in our memories until our death. These moments are our own personal chronicle of history; and sometimes it is a happy history; and sometimes it is the story of tragedy. War with its hatreds, bitterness, fighting, starvation, bombing, fires, mechanisms of destructions and death came to our country, Czechoslovakia in the year, 1939. Moments in time changed for everyone in the world.

  People in the world were shocked over the war’s beginning, but the impact of the real exigencies of the war had not penetrated people’s consciousness—for they were human and had a muted sense of reality. After all, who knew that this war was a war designed to conquer and to control the world and to be the war of all wars. The machinery of war moved quickly, capturing, evading, and prodding forward with the sound of tanks and guns, bombs, and the roar of airplanes prowling the clouds in the skies over Europe. There are those who would deny it ever happened. For those of us who were there and were hunted like animals, there is always the feeling of loss and sadness when remembering all that one experienced.

  Every year since the Germans took over the country, no one could be the same. Adrenalin levels never rested. It was an instant defeat for our peaceful way of life—praying at our Temples, going to work and making a living, and for us young ones, studying in school. It affected the food that we ate, and the clothes that we wore. It affected the air that we breathed. It affected our freedom. It affected our ability to dream that life would improve for us.

  As the war raged, and we marked the months of occupation on the calendar, and with an indelible marker in our minds; the longer the war went on, the worse it got—the more fierce the fighting. We knew that sooner or later the fighting would come to our town, Micholovce.

  In the beginning we went about our daily business, but as the days passed my father heard one story after another about people disappearing; at first it was the businessmen who traveled from city to city who never returned. The feeling of helplessness overtook us all, but our abiding love for our God sustained us and reignited a spirit of hope somehow within us. We prayed in our homes and the prayer for sustaining life became more real day after day. We began to realize that this war was not going to go away. Many of us consulted the Rabbi of our large congregation and magnificent synagogue. He told us to stay. Every time we questioned him, this was his answer.

  For the Sabbath and for the Jewish holidays, the men gathered in basements where they knew they were not followed; they said the prayers but their minds were thinking about the Germans at the same time. The prayers helped us to overcome our fears of dying and were an excellent means of defying the Germans, and this sustained us. Many people planned to conserve food and planned hiding places in order to escape from the Nazis. An extra room behind the closets was the going thing to work on. Digging tunnels from basements was another plan devised by many. Food was hoarded and buried for the day when there would be no food. Every day that we survived was a triumph. Every day was a new way of life, which was so different from our peaceful and spiritual existence.

  I was certain that the animal soul within us would surface, but this was a time when we needed the combination of the spiritual life and the animal soul. Our whole routine changed. My mother no longer watched us as we left for school. We slept long hours in our beds, so that the days would be shorter. My grandfather Jacob lived with us and he always knew a nice way to say to us children, “Quiet down now”. He would always say to me, especially, “Come over and sit with me, and I will read you a story”. It would always be a story from the Bible and then we would talk about the characters in the story. Then he would fall asleep in his chair, and I would sit by his side watching him, while finishing the book.

  In the beginning, the movement against the Jews in Micholovce was subtle. Lists were secretly compiled of the names of the Jews. The list made no distinction to man, woman, or child. Even a newborn Jew was considered an enemy of the state. Everything was subtle, but people who were taken away from the ghetto never returned. They seemed to have disappeared. But by chance one or two men escaped from their rapacious captors and returned to tell the truth about what was happening.

  People were shattered, shaking with fear, as they heard the ominous truth about the devil, named Hitler, and his bunch of barbarians, and their master plan to eradicate all of the Jews. Jews were being
rounded up and forced to remove their clothing. They were forced to stand naked in front of deeply dug pits. With wild, shattering bullets released against them, they fell to their deaths. The soft sound of a final breath reverberating could still be heard despite the loud sound of the thunderous rifles. The very few who woke up and managed to climb through the mangled, bloody, gray-colored, rigid, cold bodies, were never able to forget the horrors of this experience.

  Trembling, fear, agony, crying, the sound of wailing grief could be heard from each home in the ghetto. Some people gave up and succumbed in their own beds. Others built secret cellars. Yet, others built rooms behind secret walls. Some built tunnels. A few packed up their belongings and gave themselves a chance to make their own fate, by trying to escape. Others planned carefully, strategizing how to board a boat with an attempt to escape to the land of Israel. Some were able to purchase false identification papers and were able to cross the border of their country, beginning a new life in another city far away from their homes, and families, and businesses, and temples.

  Joseph’s older brother, Samuel, approached him about money from his share of the lumber business. Joseph promised to come up with the cash to buy him out. Joseph sold what he could: a valuable diamond necklace, an heirloom pearl necklace, and took cash from a business vault.

  Sam left the country with his wife and daughter with a guide as soon as he had the money. He traveled first to Casablanca, and then when he could arrange safe passage to the United States, he arranged passage on an ocean liner for the United States. He made it. He was very lucky.

  CHAPTER 2:

  JOSEPH’S PLAN TO ESCAPE

  Joseph Freier decided to take his family across the border and to board a train to Switzerland. He contacted friends and family whom he knew he could trust and he asked if anyone knew a guide who could be trusted. One day, three weeks later, a friend knocked softly on his door. Joseph opened the door quickly and with both eyes peering at one time in every direction around his house, he let the friend in. He closed the door with a quick thrust and excused himself for his abruptness. He stood straight with the inside of the door arching his back, all 5’8” of him. He moved his right arm forward and pointed his finger towards the kitchen, and he pushed his glasses closer to his eyes.