'Think Tomorrow We Might Not Be' -Renia Spiegel
Soviet soldiers during the 1939 invasion of Poland
courtesy, Wikimedia Commons
Think tomorrow we might not be
A cold,steel knife
Will slide between us, you see
But today there is still time for life
Tomorrow the sun might be eclipsed
Bullets might crack and rip
And howl, pavements awash
With blood, with dirty, stinky slag,pigwash
Today you are alive
There is still time to survive
Let's blend our blood
When the song still moves ahead
The song of the wild and furious flood
Brought by the living dead
my every muscle trembles
My body for your closeness fumbles
It's supposed to be a throttling game, this is
Not enough eternity for all the kisses
Translated from Polish by Anna Hide and Marta Dzuirosz, taken from Renia Spiegel's diary: Originally published in 'Smithsonian' magazine feature The Long-Lost Holocaust Diary of Renia Spiegel
The above lines are from a diary that began on 31st January 1939, and written by a seventeen year old Jewish Polish girl by the name of Renia Spiegel on 7th June 1942 .
When the Germans invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, Renia was living with her grandparents at Przemzyl , 150 miles east from Krakow. Her mother was living in Warsaw, the whereabouts of the father was not know. Her younger sister Ariana was visiting Przemzyl. As the Germans attacked , the Russians moved into occupy the eastern part of Poland, including Premzyl. In June 1941, the rest of Poland fell to the Germans. In June 1942, Renia became romantically involved with a Jewish boy called Zygmunt Schwarzer, who had connections with the resistance. In July 1942, the ghetto at Premzyl was established, and deportations to the death camps were soon to follow. Zygmunt managed to get Renia and Ariana out of the ghetto. Ariana was placed with a sympathetic Christian friend, and Renia went into hiding with Zygmunt's parents.
Renia and Zygmunt's mother and father were discovered and shot by the Germans on 30th July 1942. Zygmunt appeared at the house shortly afterwards, to find that both his parents and his girlfriend were dead. He found Renia's diary and wrote the words " Three shots ! Three lives lost! All I can hear are shots! shots," as a last entry.
Meanwhile Renia's mother had taken a new identity in Warsaw and converted to the Roman Catholic faitth. After the war she left Poland with Ariana to live in New York. Zygmunt survived incarceration in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, to later study medicine. He later travelled to New York and passed on Renia's diary ( of around 700 pages) to Renia's mother in the 1950's. Eventually in 2012, Ariana's daughter arranged for a Polish publication.
Some extracts from the diary have already appeared from the 'Smithsonian' magazine. Fascinating reading. Renia wrote about the deportations of Jews from Russian occupied Poland to Siberia before the German invasion.Also the Soviet demand to abolish single sex education in January 1940, for being 'bourgeois' led to boys being admitted to Renia's school. Once the German occupation began,Renia wrote about the de-humanising experience of being Jewish and forced to wear a Star of David armband. But other aspects of a teenage girl's life appear such as romance, teenage cattiness towards schoolmates, torment when Renia thinks that Zygmunt has taken another girl to a party instead of her. Sexual desire also emerges as a theme in the diary.
At times, in researching World War 2 poetry, just find a poem too difficult to remove from the context of its creation. Knowing that these lines were written by a Jewish girl, who was to be murdered just after her eighteenth birthday, it somehow seems irrelevant if a middle aged slob like myself from the 21st century- who has seen a lot of the good things in life- 'likes' or 'dislikes' what Renia wrote. Or starts to think I am being clever by over-analysing the poem, hoping to discover some hidden subtext that nobody else can spot. So I am letting the lines stand as they are.
The extracts from the diary published already on line show that Renia wrote other poems. An English translation will appear in the Summer of 2019. A film about Renia Spiegel -'Broken Dreams'- should be completed in May 2019.
NOTES AND SOURCES
As well as The Long Lost Diary of Renia Spiegel article cited above from 'Smithsonian' magazine, the same publication has a biographical article about Renia's life.
'Why Renia Spiegel is called the Polish Anne Frank' from 'Forward' magazine
UPDATE 19th October 2024
There was a Renia Spiegel Foundation website but link no longer working.
When the Germans invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, Renia was living with her grandparents at Przemzyl , 150 miles east from Krakow. Her mother was living in Warsaw, the whereabouts of the father was not know. Her younger sister Ariana was visiting Przemzyl. As the Germans attacked , the Russians moved into occupy the eastern part of Poland, including Premzyl. In June 1941, the rest of Poland fell to the Germans. In June 1942, Renia became romantically involved with a Jewish boy called Zygmunt Schwarzer, who had connections with the resistance. In July 1942, the ghetto at Premzyl was established, and deportations to the death camps were soon to follow. Zygmunt managed to get Renia and Ariana out of the ghetto. Ariana was placed with a sympathetic Christian friend, and Renia went into hiding with Zygmunt's parents.
Renia and Zygmunt's mother and father were discovered and shot by the Germans on 30th July 1942. Zygmunt appeared at the house shortly afterwards, to find that both his parents and his girlfriend were dead. He found Renia's diary and wrote the words " Three shots ! Three lives lost! All I can hear are shots! shots," as a last entry.
Meanwhile Renia's mother had taken a new identity in Warsaw and converted to the Roman Catholic faitth. After the war she left Poland with Ariana to live in New York. Zygmunt survived incarceration in both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, to later study medicine. He later travelled to New York and passed on Renia's diary ( of around 700 pages) to Renia's mother in the 1950's. Eventually in 2012, Ariana's daughter arranged for a Polish publication.
Some extracts from the diary have already appeared from the 'Smithsonian' magazine. Fascinating reading. Renia wrote about the deportations of Jews from Russian occupied Poland to Siberia before the German invasion.Also the Soviet demand to abolish single sex education in January 1940, for being 'bourgeois' led to boys being admitted to Renia's school. Once the German occupation began,Renia wrote about the de-humanising experience of being Jewish and forced to wear a Star of David armband. But other aspects of a teenage girl's life appear such as romance, teenage cattiness towards schoolmates, torment when Renia thinks that Zygmunt has taken another girl to a party instead of her. Sexual desire also emerges as a theme in the diary.
At times, in researching World War 2 poetry, just find a poem too difficult to remove from the context of its creation. Knowing that these lines were written by a Jewish girl, who was to be murdered just after her eighteenth birthday, it somehow seems irrelevant if a middle aged slob like myself from the 21st century- who has seen a lot of the good things in life- 'likes' or 'dislikes' what Renia wrote. Or starts to think I am being clever by over-analysing the poem, hoping to discover some hidden subtext that nobody else can spot. So I am letting the lines stand as they are.
The extracts from the diary published already on line show that Renia wrote other poems. An English translation will appear in the Summer of 2019. A film about Renia Spiegel -'Broken Dreams'- should be completed in May 2019.
NOTES AND SOURCES
As well as The Long Lost Diary of Renia Spiegel article cited above from 'Smithsonian' magazine, the same publication has a biographical article about Renia's life.
'Why Renia Spiegel is called the Polish Anne Frank' from 'Forward' magazine
UPDATE 19th October 2024
There was a Renia Spiegel Foundation website but link no longer working.
Best to try the related Facebook group which still seems to be active.
Wish to acknowledge the help of film director Tomasz Magierski with this article.
OTHER BLOGS
There is a companion blog to this one A Burnt Ship which is about war poetry and prose with a connection to the Stuart era.
There is also Bleak Chesney Wold 19th century history & literature blog
