by Shelly Blankman
I
When all roads lead to monsters, where do you turn?
Plucked like a stinkweed from his family farm, a young
Ukrainian is trucked like freight to Nazi camps, where he
labors for the next 12 years in four concentration camps.
Like all captives, he will be stripped of warm clothes in
frigid weather. He will be fed a half-slice of bread and
watered-down soup before laboring in dark and dank
tunnels and mines with only stone cots on which to rest.
In quarries, he will hoist heavy boulders up hundreds of
steps and carry down corpses of those murdered by
Nazis for their frailities. And if he falters, he dies, too.
He survives. Sick, emaciated, bearing scars of abuse
and pain, but alive.
II
He returns to Ukraine to rebuild his life. An apartment that is
safe and warm. Clothes, food, medical care. A wife, children
and grandchildren. Most of all, he has a voice. He travels to
speak for those who have been silenced. Conferences, events,
memorials, and schools. People must remember. This must
never happen again. But his travels have now led to a wartorn
road with a dead end. Seventy-seven years after his nightmare
at the hands of Nazis has ended, Russian troops bomb his
apartment, killing him.
III
He now lies in a roadside cemetery. A few family members clustered
around his coffin at his funeral. A stiff, cold wind snuffed out their
lit candles quickly. A young Orthodox priest, bundled in a parka,
led a hasty service as bombs blasted in the distance. “He was patient
and kind,” he lamented as the coffin was lowered into the damp ground.
If only the world would be the same.
Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland, where she and her husband have filled their empty nest with three rescue cats and a foster dog. Their sons, Richard and Joshua, now live in New York and Texas (respectively). Following careers in journalism, public relations, and copy editing, Shelly now spends time writing poetry, scrapbooking and making cards. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Super Highway, Praxis Magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Muddy River Review, among other publications. A couple of years ago, Richard and Joshua surprised Shelly by publishing her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead.