Holocaust poem makes young Gemma a big winner

SUZANNE BELLING

PHOTOGRAPH SUPPLIED

Joseph Gerassi, executive head of Redhill, commented: “Reading Gemma’s poem I was immediately struck by her ability to identify with the victims who lived and died at the hands of the Nazis.

“While Gemma is not Jewish and has not been brought up imbued with the Holocaust, her poem clearly demonstrates the power of survivor testimony to evoke a visceral response generations later. I am incredibly proud of her achievement.”

The contest has been running for the past 17 years. This year it focused on “Telling it Forward: Making Memory Matter”, honing in on the transmission and subsequent preservation of Holocaust survivor memory. It was presented by the Rodgers Centre for Holocaust Education at this top California university.

This contest allows young high school learners from around the world to put a memory of a Holocaust survivor forward into a piece of art or writing. The contest is the largest of its kind, reaching some 20 states in the US as well as Canada, Poland and South Africa.

This year 5 700 learners from public and private schools, initially responded to submit essays, poems, films and artwork to the contest, inspired by the stories of Holocaust survivors via video testimonies made available to learners by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and The 1939 Society.

Three works per participating school were then chosen and sent on to be entered officially in the contest. Those works were judged by a panel of Holocaust survivors, local business people, professionals, organisational leaders and Chapman faculty and students.

 “For each learner, there is always one memory to which they especially connect, the memory they know they will never forget and that they want to share with others, that they want to ‘tell forward’, the theme of this year’s contest,” said Marilyn J Harran, director of the Rodgers Centre for Holocaust Education and Stern Chairman in Holocaust History.

Dr James L Doti, Chapman University’s president, has been a strong supporter of the contest since its inception.

The contest is presented in partnership with The 1939 Society and sponsored by the Samueli Foundation; Yossie and Dana Hollander; in co-ooperation internationally with The Forum for Dialogue for entries from Poland; Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre for those from South Africa; and both the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre and The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre for those from Canada.

Gemma, who has never visited a Holocaust Centre or been to a camp in Europe, told the SA Jewish Report she would really like to go.

Initially she did not experience empathy with the survivor testimony on the video she was shown, but “then I tried to imagine how I would have felt if I lost a sibling in the Holocaust”.

Her winning poem, which earned Gemma $500 and the school $200, appears below:

Brother

By Gemma Davies, Grade 10

Redhill School, Johannesburg, South Africa

Teacher: Michelle Kalify

Survivor Testimony: Engelina Billauer

Brother, you left me behind

To live in crowded isolation

Wide-eyed and headstrong and

alone

Brother, you left me behind

In a derelict town where no one spoke

No one listened

And no one but me could hear the roaring silence

Brother, you left me behind

To walk streets of crystal

Burning under a blazing sun

And brutalised under a daffodil star

Brother, you left me behind

With girls as much like orphans as those with living parents could be

While train tracks and strangers in black

Stole our families from our sides

Brother, you left me behind

To slave my gullible youth away

Making German grenades, detonated with irony

Fuelled by a fruitless and desperate optimism

Brother, you left me behind

Under siege from a downpour of explosions

A rain of carnage

On a parched landscape

Brother, you left me behind

To hold my wasting form upright

With the barrel of a gun in my side

While courage taunted from behind the façade of a brave face

Brother, you left me behind

Until I was left with near to nothing

A void where my vibrant heart should have been pounding

Left to barter hope for my survival

Brother, you left me behind

And when we were liberated

I was no more than oxygen rasping its way through an unwilling host

I had freedom but lacked someone with whom to share it

For you escaped long before me, and, Brother, you left me behind

But, Brother, I wish you’d left alive