Sunday, March 14, 2010

Of Betrayal,Child of Holocaust,Of Pain and Dreams and a Song in my Heart


drawing by marguerita

The Real World according to MF.

Never Forget,
Mark, I had a dream
that you destroyed.
Gone with the wind.
I will forever remember that.
That was also the
the book
my mother was
reading before
the war and she finished
while pregnant with me.
I nearly was named Scarlet.
How can I forget.
You were the family for me.
My only one.
ONE.
The man that is
my world,
my continent.
And you tore me apart.
We have two sons
I stopped everything for you
I lied, for you
I fought for you,
I did not care for anyone's
reproaches.
You are a part of me
my Sun,Moon and Stars
What are we all in this
Life,
If not passers by
what counts only is
passion and love
not wars and conflicts
not diamonds and
bling blings
that all can go
only love is permanent.
It is in my heart,
on my skin,my reason
to live.
My art comes from within,
runs in my blood,
it is my soul.
I always remember my mother telling
me how after being arrested by the
Nazi and brought to the Wavel Castle in Krakow,
she was on a line among thousands
of naked women,stripped naked
by the Nazi, her earrings
ripped of from
her earlobes, turquoise earrings
given to her by her grandmother,
those earrings ripped off from her earlobes,
her head shaved,
her arm tattooed,
and clothes that
did not fit her,
and then the Nazi
instructed her to
look in the mirror.
A beautiful woman, who had
a normal life,working to help
others, while studying at
Jagiellonski, Asian culture,
Confucius.
She was married
and her husband a lawyer,
one of the first murdered
when Hitler
invaded Poland.
Her father too and her mother
killed in Treblinka.
My mother was never able to find her brothers.
although she was told that
one was killed while flying for
the Polish Army.
I was born after the war.
In Sydney,Australia.
A beautiful country.
My parents left when I was four.
My father wanted to
find his brother in Rio,
in Brazil.
So with this in my mind
and the stories
my father would tell
me after his nightmares,
what else would I wish in life
if not only affection and Peace.
Peace in my life
and Peace in the world.
So, you Mark,
instead of giving me a hug,
a hug,
a hug with warmth and sincerity
you chose
to abandon me,
abandon our family,
neglect us.
Leave me in the dark
Get mad at me,
because I wanted you near me
to hold my hand.
Or as Tom Jobim's song
The Fundamental Thing
is to Dream a Dream together.
To love the man I chose to love
to hug me.
The homes that belong to my
parents,strangers
are living there.
I spent my life rootless,
as a branch of a tree
floating in space,
and now you left me homeless
and destitute.


I am a child of the Holocaust.
Alone.


I only had my two parents.
Mother and Father who come out
from the ashes.
They were beaten,starved,humiliated
They lost all their family,
all their assets,
their social status.
I never saw any of my cousins.
Of my grandmothers,
only two photos,
and one of my grandfather
and one of my uncle.
Beautiful people,
who loved,who cared.
My mother come out of Auschwitz with 36 kilos.
I grew up looking at the tattoo on her arm
I could not stand numbers.
My father come out of a gulag
in Kazaghstan.
Both loved life,
Both had joie de vivre
But we were
uprooted.
There was no place we belonged
to.
So we moved to Brazil.
We had to learn the language.
My father could not
work with the Nazi that were
all over.
We moved from here to there.
I watched my father
slowly through the years
Dying against his will.
My mother lived in stupor
She remembered always
the songs from Poland.
The history,
her life that was.

So, I as a little girl dreamed
of princes and castles.
I walked to school alone.
Many times did not have
money for food.
I started to work as a young girl.
In a country that women
did not.
I had always to fend for myself.
My father was dying.
He wanted me to be strong,
He warned me not to succumb.
I hear in my mind
the sound of his typewriter.
And my father died.
I went to Australia.
So now we were two.
My mother and I
We then went to Australia.
And three years
after enduring hardship
I succeeded.
My art always took me
places.
But I missed Brazil
and I returned
After I achieved success,
Brazil was under dictatorship
I come to America.
I come to work for the NYTimes
as a poltical cartoonist.
The country was
Not the place I was led to believe.
I had dreams like
in the Gershwin song
One day,
The Man I Love

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