Whatever You Can Carry

Twenty-nine storerooms were burned (before the liberation
of Auschwitz). In the six that remained they discovered
348,820 men's suits, 836,255 women's coats, more than
seven tons of human hair and even 13,946 carpets.
--Michael Berenbaum: The World Must Know

"You will work in the factory, work in
the fields, you will be resettled in the East,
bring whatever you can carry."

So our dresses, shirts, suits, underwear,
bedsheets, featherbeds, pillows, tablecloths,
towels, we carried.

We carried our hairbrushes, handbrushes,
toothbrushes, shoedaubers, scissors, mirrors,
safety razors. Forks, spoons, knives,

pots, saucepans, tea strainers, potato
peelers, can openers we carried. We carried
umbrellas, sunglasses, soap, toothpaste,

shoe polish. We carried our photographs.
We carried our sewing machines. We carried
rugs, medical instruments, the baby's pram.

Jewelry we carried, sewn in our shoes,
sewn in our corsets, hidden in our vaginas,
hidden in anuses.

We carried loaves of bread, bottles of wine,
schnapps, cocoa, chocolate, jars of marmalade,
cans of fish. Wigs, prayer shawls, tiny

Torahs, skullcaps, phylacteries we carried.
Warm winter coats in the heat of summer
we carried. On our coats, our suits,

our dresses, we carried our yellow stars.
On our baggage in bold letters, our addresses,
our names we carried.

Copyright 2003 Stephen Herz