A Translator in Auschwitz

You were twenty-four, Mala, when the Nazis
came for you in Antwerp, Belgium, on the street
of yellow stars. It was then your old life ended
and you were swept downward by history’s
darkest whorl.

In the women’s camp at Birkenau, your command
of German helped you name the unspoken, and you
could sometimes intercede between fellow prisoners
and the immense power that held them.

And soon, from fire and ash, from blood and darkness,
you drew a stunned few whose pain could not be quieted
and moved them to temporary refuge: those broken twigs
those scorched leaves who only recently
had been people.

All your life, Mala, you were first to question, first
to fight injustice, and you were the first woman
to escape from Auschwitz. That you were captured
at the Slovak border and brought back to death’s embrace
— death that had been promised to every Jew —

was not revelation, but destiny. How fitting it was
that you slashed your wrists on the path to the gallows
and lashed out at the guard who’d cursed you. Your blood
on his face, a translation that defies understanding.