Page 64 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana. Edelman. The Man

‘Edelman reminisces that when they
left the bunkers, they saw the burning
city and were about to force their

way through to the sewage canals, his
[female] subordinate whispered: “A tree

was standing by a road, / A slanting
tree by a river / And all the birds from
that tree / had flown somewhere far

away”. And everybody felt that those
birds, which had flown away, were

their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,
acquaintances and friends. They were
running to the sewers, not all of them

made it there, many fell on their way.
And that girl was one of the first to fall
- she didn’t make it to the sewer. She

said goodbye to the world with that
poem’.

Icyk Manger
- Yiddish poet and writer