My mother's tongue was Magyar, my father's words were too;

Magyar was the way also my Grandma used to coo.

Magyar was the melody that warmed inside my heart;

Magyar was the first poem my father would impart.

Magyar were the words uttering my first "I love you",

In the Magyar tongue I sang my own first poem too.

I felt I was Hungarian, then came the rude cue:

"Get to hell you lousy swine, you filthy, rotten Jew!"

It was Magyar hand that waved on the wagons to roll,

To spill their weary Jewish load into the hell-hole

Of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Tall, dark chimneys spewed their ash

- Like the tornado clouds - burdensome load to unlash,

Onto the morbid, overcast sky above the camp,

To fall back on the land again, forever to stamp

An indelible mark of doom over the landscape;

A stark symbol of Jewish fate, never to escape.

My mother's tongue was Magyar, my father's words were too;

My Grandma's ashes in Auschwitz… no more would she coo…

Magyar was too the anguished scream caught up in my throat,

Universal the primal pain frozen in my thought.

My mother's tongue was Magyar, my father's words were too;

Magyar was the "Red Regime" that locked us in a "Zoo"

Behind barbed wires, known as the "Iron Curtain." Oh, yes!

Magyar were all the men who caused all the new distress.

Perhaps it is nothing more, the name or my mien,

Marked me out to remain forever an alien…

Magyar was still the melody deep inside my heart,

But my mixed identity was beginning to smart.

Magyar was the Uprising that unshackled the grief,

But the relief from oppression proved futile and brief.

Magyar was the landscape I left finally behind;

To remain a true Magyar, with regret, I declined.

Now I'm an alien to carry a Jewish fate,

Forever to hope for peace; new horrors to await.

My tongue mimics my limping limbs as I walk along;

Alien is the melody as I sing a song,

Alien are the words that fall off my stumbling tongue.

My body's withered; only my soul's remaining young.

I walk in the dust but lift my spirit high above,

Hope and sing about the day when Man will learn to love.

© P. J. Oszmann (2003) Revised