Terezin
The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere inside our memoriesWe’ve suffered here more than enough,
Here in this clot of grief and shame,
Wanting a badge of blindness
To be a proof for their own children.A fourth year of waiting, like standing above a swamp
From which any moment might gush forth a springMeanwhile, the rivers flow another way,
Another way,
Not letting you die, not letting you live.And the cannons don’t scream and the guns don’t bark
And you don’t see blood here.
Nothing, only silent hunger.
Children steal the bread here and ask and ask
and ask
And all would wish to sleep, keep silent and
just to go to sleep again…The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere inside our memories
“Terezin” by someone simply known as Mif is one of the more famous elegies coming from the children of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The camp, simply known as Terezin for the town it inhabited, was known for having many children imprisoned there during World War 2. It was unusual for a concentration camp simply for its culture, which far surpassed many of the grizzlier camps of the time. Still, Terezin didn’t go without its horrors, as depicted in Mif’s poem, written in 1944 at the end of war.
Mif opens with a visual of a heavy wheel rolling across their foreheads to bury itself in their memories. This is the most famous line of the poem. It’s imagery is powerful. The words bring the weight of things that Mif hasn’t yet addressed already to the forefront of your mind. It sets the mood of the poem quite quickly.
This is something Mif does well. They translate the mood and feeling of Terezin into the elegy itself. With phrases like “clot of grief and shame”, “standing above a swamp/from which any moment might gush forth a spring”, “And the cannons don’t scream and the guns don’t bark/And you don’t see blood here./Nothing, only silent hunger”, they use poetic language to translate the feeling of hopelessness, the constant waiting, and the suffering of the camp.
Mif also doesn’t dive into the too abstract, which helps in this case. There is no need for flowery or weird phrases to portray this type of suffering. They let it speak for itself. The poem laments about the suffering of all in Terezin, from the children starving to death to the adults unable to do anything about their pain except wish for the child to sleep. This suffering and imagery stays with the reader just as it stayed with those who survived, and those that didn’t.