Neighbours, Eastern Poland,1940 Poem by Leo Yankevich

I turn my shoulder to the grey and think
of Yosel, son of Saul Rabinsky, how
he slammed the doors of crowded cattle cars
bound for Siberia, although the faces
inside were those of neighbours, Catholic Poles.

How haplessly they looked back through the cracks,
their petty gentry voices cursing him
and the red star on his cone-shaped traitor’s cap,
their love of Poland beyond his comprehension,
their foolishness not worthy of his grief.

He did not know few would survive the journey
and those who did would perish in the gulags,
their tundra-bitten bodies heaped beneath
Lavrentii Beria’s orders, like forgotten
enemies of a freedom-loving state.

The son of Saul Rabinsky did not know
the Wehrmacht would attack within a year
and soon behind them come a death's head squad
to mock the bearded rabbis of the town
and herd its Jews into a killing field.

He did not know he’d be betrayed by neighbours,
who, in a cabal of silence and revenge,
would watch the gendarmes drag him through the square,
neighbours with whom he’d played and gone to school
and whose unbridled hatred matched his own.