As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner-German Jewish Poets   

EMMANUEL SAUL (1876-1915)

TO MY CHILDREN

When I left home to fight for Fatherland

Against the threat of danger and deceit

You, children, happily around me ran

Rejoicing in your father’s bravery,

His uniform and other warlike clothes,

And in his newfound worth and bravery.

All hid from child-like sight was what it means

When now your father leaves for war and death.

But later when you are mature and wise,

And when perhaps my bones far east may lie

Bleaching alone under a wooden cross –

Then dread and horror you may start to feel

And you will think about that far-off time

When we all said farewell for the last time.

The certainty will ease your private pain

That proud and joyful he did join the ranks

Who all fought for our Reich’s security.

And do you want to know why I went out,

Enthused and happy joining all the  rest,

My life by sweetest wife and love still crowned,

While you in childhood’s blossom sweet and pure

Appeared before me in your  beauteous youth?

I say to you, and listen carefully

I left you all because a German I,

No other way could I think, feel or act!

A German in each fibre of my heart.

Strong feelings  as a student came to me

Of noble, precious German worth and good.

My childish heart rejoiced when I did hear

Of German victories and greatness told.

But when each sudden blow my nation struck,

It shattered me deep in my inmost soul;

It penetrated me so deep in marrow’s core

That it became my life’s experience.

So moved was I deep in my heart of hearts

Because of tragic destiny that struck

And tried to kill the noble dynasty

The kingly breed of Hohenstauffens proud,

So deeply moved was I that, yet a child,

Still tied to school desk and not yet mature

It held the grip of written fantasy.

Then came a war with German forces strong

Not only against German pride and power –

But against German peoples,  German kind,

Consciously evil, devilishly conceived –

A war, not fought as knights with weapon bared,

But hunger’s ruin forcing us to yield.

With bold lies and the basest treachery

With despicable and immoral acts

They wanted to destroy our long-sought peace

Achieved by German peoples’ work and toil.

The blooming of our scientists’ research

Creations of our keen artistic Volk

The blessings of our culture most refined

The glorious and proud acts of German spirits

The sound of German poetry and bloom

Of happy lives created by hard work

The blessings of our work with brother’s hands

In company with values strong and good.

Yes, snuffed out and destroyed, removed from life

A world without our art they wished to see!

It is a war, heart beating strong in breast

With mindful thoughts and blood strong in the veins,

Proclaimed against a hellish evil beast.

And to what end? The merchants to enrich

And thieves hungry for gold to make more rich.

And then our holy anger was enflamed:

How else could I have  thought and felt right then

When German nation’s brave and brightest youth,

When I too loved our holy German art?

Could outrage not then fill my deepest soul

When German essence is now so defiled

When we are blamed for all outrageous acts

When  slanderous doubts of our nobility

Drag us all down in mud and dirt and filth.

Relief and not complaint rose in my soul

When fate chose me for battle’s severe test,

Vengeance to take on malice, lies, deceit

Defending German richness and fair bloom,

To fight for wife and child for my land’s sake,

Protecting them from Asiatic hordes,

That breed of tigers at our eastern gate

Who heinously with us in past has dealt.

What noble joy! Thus did I leave with hope,

A German, German borders to protect –

And yet another thing drove me to war.

I am a Jew, and faithful, true and proud

Of the tribe from whose blood  I take my source.

In time of peace we oft are spoken  of

With calumny about our Jewish faith.

We are called base cowards unfit to fight

And turned away from lofty goals of life,

Mean, low and selfish, gain-obsessed,

They curse us cruelly  – and this is the worst

The hard blow that strikes like the whip’s lash –

As foreign on the soil for which our fathers

Have paid both with their sweat and with their blood. –

My heart is now gripped with time’s urgency

One will have I, one single holy wish

That Jew and German bind themselves as one.

That we are German needs no outside proof,

The truth thereof shines clearly as the sun,

We Jews all leave for war of our own wish,

Joyful to throng around our country’s flag

To gain for ourselves – even if fate wills

That we pay with our blood – our Fatherland.

For Jewish kin have sadly called the land

In which we live Stepfatherland:

This was my last but well-considered wish.. .

That I and all of us will prove our strength:

Our Fatherland for which we have such love

That placed us at the back unjustly, wrong

And that we fight bravely when duty calls

To strike the foe like, once in days of yore,

The Maccabees, proud scions of our tribe  -

Who are our enemies in this just war,

The Judas,  old notorious foe of yore

The cruel old oppressor of our race,

The enemies of culture, freedom, right,

Who are our enemies now? – One hate

Unites us, finally, with freedom’s joy

Warriors for culture, German, Jew unite

And then will bloom one common destiny:

Defeat may lead to our destruction, sure,

But victory frees, ennobles, gives us joy.

For what  can we expect from our cruel foe,

That now spills Jewish blood in their own lands,

Flowing in streams, and causes grief and woe

To Jewish children, women without fault?

Therefore I left for battle, as I am.

A German Jew to fight in holy war.

Emmanuel Saul  -  Translated by Peter Appelbaum