while they fattened [Itsik] Fefer and cleaned him up. The room where the two men actually met was bugged, of course, so Fefer couldn't say anything out loud, but he repeatedly slashed his hand sideways across his own throat. The fact that much later Robeson told the story indicates that he understood what Fefer was trying to tell him. At the time, however, he left Russia and said nothing; Fefer returned to Lubyanka, and his death. In silence, as if they had never existed, the Jews of Soviet Union were "buried without a name, without a number, without a 'here lies.'"
Chaim Baider, the poet who wrote those lines, spent the last two decades of his life painstakingly assembling crumbs of facts memorializing the silenced Soviet writers, musicians, painters, actors, and teachers.
from Jewish Ideas Daily: The Night of the Murdered Poets
~~~~~~~~~~~
No comments :
Post a Comment