In my family tree there are many Jews
burnt to a crisp in Lithuanian death camps,
& from another branch some who made it out alive,
survivors of famous Bergen-Belsen & Dachau,
cousins of my maternal grandmother
who often visited our house of four generations,
home to my Yiddish-only great-grandmother, born in 1860,
& her daughter, a Zionist leader-matriarch—
whose obituary would later appear on the front page
of the Jerusalem Post—all the way to me, the first boomer.

I remember their thick accents
& the blue numbers on their wrists,
their cousin, a psychiatrist, whose husband was killed
in the 1956 War & above all, my father,
a teenage GI captured after D-Day by the Nazis,
& served 10 months as a POW,
shot & captured while escaping, but attended a secret seder
under the noses of his guards, who knew he was a kike.
Still, he recollected, they treated the Red Army internees the worst,
by far. We traded his purple hearts and bronze star for the medals
other kids had of their fathers, reliving the war though barter.
It was all so much lore, larger than life.

I remember when Eichmann was seized in Argentina,
the profound & eerie sit down discussions my old man had with me
to explain the facts of the enormous, deliberate death,
the books I devoured on the subject matter, my obsession, hardly unique,
with its gnawing, intimate history to which I was now
& forever connected. I read beyond satiation.
I know the chronology of events, the source & results of
a divided proletariat & its fatal illusions in bourgeois democracy,
which allowed the last elections be transformed into civil war—
at least for one side—the exuberant conflagration of toxic books as
purifying sacramental rite, the Enabling Act, who started
the Reichstag fire, the minute details of the Nuremburg Laws
& their inexorable, painstaking refinement, the hours you could
shop, the benches where you sat, the food you could eat,
the appearance of the Star of David as required attire,
the pathos of collective compliance, resignation, abandonment,
Kristallnacht, the immigration quotas, the voyage of the damned
& of course, where it must end, always obvious what
should have been done, but never was.

I think of this often now, the subtleties & ironies of epochs,
what Marx, the ultimate non-Jewish Jew, would call
the unity of opposites. It is this exactitude of historical symmetry,
that assails you, right before your eyes, as big as the nose on your face,
the festive & specific arrangements of barbed wire, then & now,
the symbolic markings on the target domiciles, curfews, ID checks,
the glyphs of the forces of order, war paint,
so everybody knows who was there & who stays where,
a commune of Bantustans that arches the eras,
whose slogan is: pariahs of the world, unite!

I think of these things every day as I look at this combustible
corner of the world, you know, the middle of the earth,
whose "CYCLE OF VIOLENCE" is always on spin,
a visual feast in the Holy moley land of a thousand dances
& fevered trances, land for peace for a piece of land,
the "ENDLESS ENMITIES," explained in solemnity,
rivers of lions, lakes of lambs, ancient books that venerate
the daily, nightly newsboy anchorman template, the droning lead
"SPIRAL OF HATE," as scripted fate,
toe the line or pay the fine,
in for the kill, you know the drill.

I survey the protagonists, the arguments & combatants they deploy.
The legendary & mysterious dialectic blossoms like a red, red rose,
from quantity to quality as death takes its holiday,
from chosen to frozen to lederhausen, liebfraumilch & honeyed dreams
as I board my own private time machine,
a magic carpet ride to amend the past, revise the cast,
change its hue, not for nothing this wandering Jew,
using a literary device, naughty & nice,
just to break the ice, to rupture the ritual,
departing from what’s become all to habitual.

I imagine this happened & wonder how it would have resonated
at that precise moment, played in the liberal press, in high society,
or, perish the thought, the factory, street, Jim Crow shantytown,
or much later, if history would have absolved the protagonists,
or more appropriately, erected statues of them, published their diaries,
placed their faces on stamps, produced biopics if,
way back then, when, in Berlin or Frankfurt or Munich,
during the heady, ascendant moments of the new order,
the thousand year Reich, the national socialist counterfeit revolution,
extirpating parasitism, syphilis & other forms of decay,
some handsome couple of teenagers trying to pass as young Teutons,
slipping from their ghetto, eluding security, enter enemy terrain
holding trembling hands, trying to appear for all the world
like young lovers—but who, in reality, desperate, leaderless,
eaten alive, with nothing to lose, beyond the blues—
turn quickly into a boisterous beer garden,
swank outdoor café, or dimly-lit nightclub, full of revelers,
some in starched khaki uniforms, all spit & polished,
others not, just the volkisch community, out for a good time,
but all oblivious to our pair, not noticing tell-tale signs—
slightly swarthy skin, full lips, frayed coat-sleeves—
(maybe one is better at concealment, a mischlinge half breed,
green irises, auburn hair, no matter, they only need a moment)
but now, each adolescent casts a quick, last look
at the other with their mournful, electric eyes, a gaze
so full of life they are almost intoxicated by the exchange,
abruptly halted, then each swiftly detonates the home-made explosives
strapped by phylacteries around the waists of their lithe bodies,
blowing the unsuspecting patrons to kingdom come,
IT IS DONE! before even one of the wounded—gasping for life among
disconnected limbs strewn amid smoking rubble,
having recognized too late THE HORRIFIC ACT
this untermenschen has just committed,
THIS UNSPEAKABLE BARBARITY!—
can shout a guttural cry: DEATH TO THE JEWS!

-- Jon Hillson

Jon Hillson is a writer and member of the International Association of Machinists at LA International Airport.