For me, one of the hardest parts of writing a poem is knowing when it’s done. Even harder is knowing when a book is done. I’d been working on a manuscript for over ten years, and sending it out to contests, was a finalist or first runner-up in some, and got some lovely rejection notes. But, I had this nagging feeling that it wasn’t finished. It had a beginning, it had a middle, and an end, but it just wasn’t done. I was close, but needed more. I didn’t know what the “more” was; all I knew was I needed it.

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My parents are Holocaust survivors, and I’d been listening to their experiences since my teens, and writing short stories. But when I was accepted into my first poetry workshop, I realized that poetry was the language I needed. It was the way to take these experiences and get in them and muck around and see what poems would arise. I wrote for years, and finally my poetry teacher said I needed to put together a manuscript.

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In March of 2006, I got an email from my cousin with a link to a website listing Dutch Jews killed in the Shoah. I’d been on the site before and saw the names of my father’s mother, Jenny, his father, Simon, his older sister Ruth, and little brother, Josef, on the list. My father’s family was from Germany and got as far as Maastricht, Holland trying to get to America. In one of his last letters to my father, Josef wrote “with God’s help we will get to America.” Since my family weren’t technically Dutch Jews, I didn’t think the site would tell me anything I didn’t know. I went on the site, and my entire life changed. I saw everyone’s names, birth dates and dates of death, and next to Josef’s name was an icon. I clicked on it.

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Here’s what I knew – the family was deported from Maastricht to Westerbork on August 17, 1942. On November 2, 1942, they were sent to Auschwitz and killed on arrival. What I didn’t know literally took my breath away. On the website were four postcards that Josef had written to Paul Lardinois in Maastricht. When I could breathe again, I called a Dutch friend of mine and asked if he could find Paul. He called ten minutes later to say he’d just spoken with Paul and that Paul had given the postcards to the Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam, and they put them on the website. I found them two weeks after they’d been put up. After letters, phone calls and emails, I found out that Paul, who is Catholic, and Josef, both eleven-year-old boys, were friends in Maastricht, and Josef wrote to him from Westerbork.

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I knew I had to go to Holland. In January, 2007 I arrived in Amsterdam and made my way to the museum to hold the postcards that Josef wrote. I then went to Maastricht. Paul took me to where Josef and the family lived before they were deported and to the synagogue in Maastricht. It had been looted used by the Nazis during the war for storage.

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When I arrived home, I began working on poems about my trip. The poems appear in my book which was published in November, 2007, and the poem below is the last poem I wrote for the book. As I worked on the poems, I realized what the “more” was. It was me. I needed to encounter the Shoah directly. I needed to go to Maastricht.

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Poetry has given much to me, from teaching poetry to teens, adults, and seniors to judging a poetry contest for soldiers stationed in Iraq. But I never imagined poetry would lead me to Josef.

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Maastricht, January, 2007

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I am outside Wilhelmina Singel 88.

The skies are gray.

I take a deep breath and enter the building.

I walk up to the third floor. That’s where you lived.

Before deportation.

Before Westerbork.

Before Auschwitz.

I knock on the door, hoping someone is there.

Hoping someone will let me in.

The door is locked.

I stay for a while.

I walk back down and sit on the curb across the street.

I stare up at the third floor.

I wonder what your life was like in 1942.

Did you stay at home most times, afraid to go out on the street,

the yellow star on your overcoats announcing

you wherever you went?

The synagogue you went to is still there.

There is a plaque to those deported from Maastricht to Westerbork,

then to Auschwitz or Sobibor. That’s where most of you went.

Cars go by, people walk past, and I sit

watching the third floor, waiting for something to tell me it’s time to go.

The street is beautiful, you know, tree-lined, well kept.

A light rain begins to fall.

Oma, Opa, Ruth, and Josef, you jump from the third floor window. I catch you

and carry you to America with me.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine blog

Janet Kirchheimer, Guest Blogger

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**Oma and Opa are German for grandmother and grandfather.

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Janet R. Kirchheimer is a poet whose work has appeared in journals including Atlanta Review, Potomac Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Kalliope, Common Ground Review, on beliefnet.com and babelfruit.com, among others. Her collection of poems about the Holocaust, How To Spot One Of Us (2007) received endorsements from Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Sir Martin Gilbert, and Rabbis Harold Kushner and Irving “Yitz” Greenberg. In 2007, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and in 2010, received a Citation for her work from The Council of The City of New York. She is a Teaching Fellow at Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor