Erich Fried, 'A Jew to Zionist Fighters'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

A Jew to Zionist Fighters

What do you actually want?
Do you really want to outdo
those who trod you down
a generation ago
into your own blood
and into your own excrement
Do you want to pass on the old torture
to others now
in all its bloody and dirty detail
with all the brutal delight of torturers
as suffered by your fathers?

Do you really want to be the new Gestapo
the new Wehrmacht
the new SA and SS
and turn the Palestinians
into the new Jews?

Well then I too want,
having fifty years ago
myself been tormented for being a Jewboy
by your tormentors,
to be a new Jew with these new Jews
you are making of the Palestinians

And I want to help lead them as a free people
into their own land of Palestine
from whence you have driven them or in which you plague them
you apprentices of the Swastika
you fools and changelings of history
whose Star of David on your flags
turns ever quicker
into that damned symbol with its four feet
that you just do not want to see
but whose path you are following today.

By Erich Fried

[Erich Fried (1921-1988) was born in Austria. His father died under interrogation by the Gestapo. He fled to London after Germany invaded Austria in 1938. During World War II he became one of the most eminent German poets. After the war, he became a commentator for the BBC. He remained a committed socialist and acerbic critic of Stalinism. In 1978 his award-winning book 100 Poems without a Country was published in seven languages. It was followed by Love Poems in 1979. In 1986 he published 29 prose pieces and his memoirs, Sometimes Even Laughter. Fried became an outspoken voice in the West German anti-Vietnam war movement. His experiences with racism and fascism led him to oppose Zionism and support Palestinians, who, like himself, had been driven from their native land into exile. Fried received the Prix International des Editeurs, the Bremer Literature Prize, the Austrian National Prize and the Georg-Büchner Prize. He was also an important translator of Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, T.S Eliot, Graham Greene and Sylvia Plath.]

Comments

[bloodrebel333.livejournal.com]

Striking

[duathir.livejournal.com]

I thought so also. Erich Fried was a remarkable poet, but there are not many English translations of his works online.