How many died? You are not to know.

Published by carolyn on Wed, 2012-02-29 10:16

We live surrounded by treason which we often don't recognize. The information below, written by 'Kladderadatsch' at Codoh Forum, would have been a good addition to my radio program of February 13. The picture shows one of the monuments that make up the memorial in the Heide Cemetery to the February 13-14, 1945 firebombing of Dresden ... which is anything but a memorial to the German victims of this very real holocaust.

WIEVIELE STARBEN? WER KENNT DIE ZAHL?
AN DEINEN WUNDEN SIEHT MAN DIE QUAL
DER NAMENLOSEN DIE HIER VERBRANNT
IM HOELLEN FEUER AUS MENSCHENHAND.

How many died? Who knows the toll?
In your black scars we see too well
The pain of all the nameless souls
Burned in that fiery manmade hell.

A simple bit of verse, really. My translation probably could be improved on, but the lines themselves don't offer much to work with.

Life in Germany must be full of little ironies, though. A look at the German Wikipedia page for the Dresden memorials turns up the fact that the memorial poem was written by one Max Zimmering, a Jewish Zionist Communist poet who spent the war years in exile writing agitprop against the National Socialists and then returned to Dresden, post-war, to take up his pen in the service of the newly installed Communist regime of the DDR. The sentiment is fine and all, but it's really not that great a poem. Kind of makes me wonder why it was chosen.

At any rate, the first line nicely ducks the issue: "How many died? Who knows?" That's the answer the DDR government has left the citizens of Dresden, carved in stone, courtesy of Max Zimmering.