[Cz-L] Poems from Czernowitz

Hi All,

Just wanted to say hello.
I just got back from Europe on Sunday.
I will try to add some of my photos to the site in the coming week.
I have brought my email inbox down to a mere 993
so it may be a little bit until I return
emails--but I'm on my way.

I was sent this link today and thought some of
you might be interested in it-regarding a new
book.

-Kevin

<http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2008/10/harvestofblossoms.html>

incase you can't open the link...

Even before she was sent away to a concentration
camp, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger sensed her fate.
In her last poem, "Tragedy," dated Dec. 23, 1941, the Romanian teen-ager wr=
ote:
This is the hardest: to give yourself away
and then to see that no one needs you,
to give all of yourself and realize
you'll fade like smoke and leave no trace.
Selma died a year later of typhus in a Nazi labor
camp, but her handwritten album of poetry
survived -- passed between the hands of Selma's
friends across Europe before ending up in Israel.
Her friends eventually organized a private
publishing of a small edition of her works and
that edition was later picked up by a German
publishing house. Slowly, Selma's poetry and
story was brought to life.
Now, Duke University professor Irene Silverblatt
and her twin sister Helene have edited and helped
translate Selma's work for an English-speaking
audience. Working on Harvest of Blossoms: Poems
 from a Life Cut Short, which was published this
month by Northwestern University Press, had
special significance for the Silverblatts --
Selma was their cousin.
"Although neither of us believed in miracles, it
is a miracle that Selma's poetry survived," write
the Silverblatts in the book's introduction.
Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger was a typical teenage
girl. Growing up in the cosmopolitan town of
Czernowitz, Romania during the 1930s, Selma was
passionate about life and art: she loved to
dance, spent hours strolling in Czernowitz's
parks, and fervently discussed literature and
politics with friends. She expressed herself --
 from love and heartbreak over her boyfriend, to
observations about nature and the world around
her, to fear and anxiety over political upheaval
-- by writing poetry throughout her teens.
In the summer of 1941, German and Romanian troops
invaded Czernowitz and deported Selma and her
family to a Nazi labor camp. But before this
occurred, Selma compiled the more than 50 poems
she had written in an album she titled Blütenelse
(Harvest of Blossoms) and gave them to a friend
for safekeeping. Selma dedicated the poems to her
boyfriend, who was among the group of people who
preserved the album over the years.
The Silverblatt sisters were inspired to bring
Selma's poetry and life story to a wider audience
after attending a ceremony in 2004 to commemorate
the building where Selma's family lived in
Czernowitz, now known as Chernivtsi in Ukraine.
"Today's residents are re-exploring this past
which they never knew about," Irene Silverblatt
says, referring to the post-war exclusion of the
Holocaust experience for Jews in Ukrainian
schools. "To see this new understanding, this
recognition of a forgotten history, is very
moving."
A cultural anthropologist by training, Irene
Silverblatt spent most of her academic career
studying colonialism in Latin America. While
researching Jewish communities in Eastern Europe
before and during the Holocaust was a new area
for her, she says her academic background helped
her understand the broader historical forces that
shaped Selma's life.
"I hope that as people read about Selma, they get
a sense of the tragedy suffered by anybody -- Jew
or non-Jew -- who has been forced to go through
this kind of hell. But I also hope they see that,
in spite of all the horrors, Selma insisted on
humanity and she did so by writing poetry," she
says.
Silverblatt describes herself as "a fanatic about
trying to find as much as I could about Selma and
her circumstances." Through memoirs kept by
Selma's friends, the Silverblatts discovered that
Selma was an "alert, sparkling, mischievous" girl
full of "liveliness and irreverence." Former
friends described Selma as having "dark shiny
eyes, curly, unmanageable hair, and a scattering
of freckles across her shapely nose."
"Even surrounded by the ghetto's misery, Selma
could find poetry in green-eyed flies and joyous
asters, as well as in hungry farmers and
inexplicable murders, and the impact [of those
things] reverberated in this young person's mind
and inspired her words," Silverblatt observes.
"Writing was crucial to her life."
Working on the project has sparked a new
direction in Silverblatt's scholarship -- an
endeavor that has been supported by her
colleagues at Duke.
"Duke is an innovative institution that
recognizes the importance of interdisciplinary
work and how thinking outside your field can help
you think outside the box," she says.
Silverblatt's current research tries to make
sense of the growing interest in Selma's work.
Over the last five years, Selma's poems have
piqued the interest of European playwrights,
cabaret artists, pop stars, professors and city
officials. Among those drawn to Selma's story is
J.M. Coetzee, South African author and winner of
the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, who wrote of
the book, "The voice of this young woman, with
her luminous intimations of the fullness of life,
comes to us heartrendingly across the years."
Silverblatt is currently teaching a course on the
politics of memory and a graduate seminar on
nationalism, both of which grew out of her
experience bringing Selma's poems and story to
life.
"I am interested in how people make sense of the
past; how history is remembered and how certain
parts of history become a living presence and
others are suppressed. What is the meaning of art
in people's lives? How are a nation's obligations
to the past reflected in how Selma's issues are
understood?
"I hope that Selma becomes a living presence for those who read her poetry.=
"
<http://www.nasher.duke.edu/elgreco>

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Received on 2008-10-23 02:20:19