What Song Did You Sing Mother?
Just as a student taught me to “speak” my feelings to the family I lost, I was given another
opportunity, this time to address my mother specifically. It was at a program with the Long
Island Youth Orchestra at C.W. Post College in Brookville, NY, about 10 years ago. The
orchestra conductor had taken a group of young musicians to perform at Auschwitz. They
performed the theme from Schindler’s List. It was a beastly hot day, without a trace of a breeze.
This was a solemn event so applause was unsuitable. However, shortly after the end of the piece,
the leaves started to rustle noticeably due to the arrival of a strong, welcome breeze. The
musicians felt that the wind was nature’s way of acknowledging that life, not evil, had triumphed
here. This profound experience inspired the conductor to offer a musical tribute to victims and
survivors of the Holocaust.
My contribution was in the form of a poem, which I introduced with these comments:
My remembrance of my mother, physically, is limited to her head and her dark, luxurious hair
swept away from her face; her inky, deep-set eyes, which today are repeated in our son's face; and the visible mole above her lip on the right side of her face, reflected on my right cheek.
The one experiential aspect of my mother that I remember and cherish, because it has remained
with me in my love of music and my own soprano voice, is her singing to me at bedtime each
night. Ergo, this poem, below.
What Song Did You Sing Mother?
What song did you sing, mother,
When you left me behind?
When you walked with my brothers
Driven, by the beating whip.
As you hung your “pajamas” on the hook,
Did your thoughts wander off to your Gitele at all?
Did the smallest hope that she would go on,
Not perish, but live,
Mitigate some of that brutish hell?
Did you scratch the wall with your gentle fingers,
Till your blood oozed out?
Did you comfort your sons, Zelig and Yitzchak?
Chant Kaddish in advance, for yourself, and for them?
Ai–lu-lu, you sang
to one child, to all children,
to a roomful, to a people
Never to wake from this eternal sleep.
Your voice could soften any heart.
Your song could soothe a grieving breast.
But not then…not ever after.
Did your tears erase your voice?
As gas silently seeped into the “shower room,”
Assaulted your body, clamped-shut your throat.
No more melodies to the children of Israel.
Your black upsweep, turned white, now swept up
Soft as your voice once was, floating as your image floats,
Through the poisoned clouds of remnants of a people,
Cleansed by the memory of your sweet melody.
The realization came to me. I had never had a chance to mourn for my mother or anyone I had
lost. And my writings to her and about her, were really serving a multifold purpose-- a
celebration of her heroism, an expression of gratitude for giving me life twice, and most
importantly, a guarantee of her memory, so she would not suffer a second death. In total, they
are a form of Kaddish, (a Jewish prayer for the dead) my own personal Kaddish, which I had
never been allowed to express at the appropriate time.