POEMS FOR LIVIU LIBRESCU
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MY STAND - A TRIBUTE TO LIVIU LIBRESCU
By Philip C. Selz
TheWideAwakes Website
http://thewideawakes.org/archives/2007/04/22/tribute-to-liviu-librescu/
Cross Posted at GM´s Corner
http://gmroper.mu.nu/archives/223677.php
April 22, 2007I wrote this poem today about Mr. Liviu Librescu, who survived the holocaust and saved the lives of 8 or 9 students at Virginia Tech on Monday, April 16, and died from gunshot wounds. I read it at our synagogue this evening and the Rabbi suggested I distribute it to as many places as I could. I hope it touches you like it touched me as I wrote it. Thanks.
In the darkest times we´ve seen, I was sent into the camps
As I smelled the stench of burning flesh, I knew my kin were gone
Survival was my only thought, I knew I must come through
But I didn´t know the reason that my living must go onAnd when the war had ended, liberation finally came
And I grew to be a man and shortly after took a wife
And we raised our kids in Israel and we did the best we could
And we lived for those who died and worked to make a useful lifeThen a teaching job came to me in America one day
And I thought that building new young minds was destiny for me
So I traveled to Virginia and I made a brand new start
And I taught engineering in this homeland of the freeNow I hear the hallways screaming as shots are fired there
And I hear the terror in the screams and understand their plight
So I bar the door from danger and I tell my students Run!’
And as the bullets breach the door I know that I must fightAnd in these final moments as my life is seeping out
I think back over 60 years and finally understand
My own salvation now makes sense as children flee and live
I was saved that day to save this day, I´ve finally made my stand.
A POEM FOR LIVIU LIBRESCU, A POEM FOR YOSSI LIBRESCU
[An editorial writer reflects on the Virginia Tech shootings]
By Brian Lewis
StatesmanJournal Salem, Oregon
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070429/OPINION/304290004/1049
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Remember.
I remember
as a child
I worshiped my father
and now he's dead.
He loved life, was passionate about it.
And he knew death, knew the stench of it.
But never did he fear it.
He knew it too well.
He knew that fear was worse than death.
He never forgot
Ha Shoah.
Gas ovens, firing squads, mass graves.
And it never ends.
What was a 23-year-old punk with a gun
to him?
He stood in the door,
he took five shots.
And he told his students to live.
Jump out the windows and live.
He died so they might live.I never thought of my father
as a religious man.
I thought of him as a Jew.
I thought of him as my father.
And now my mind flashes back
to scenes from the movie Gladiator.
A general who became a slave,
slave who became a gladiator.
We, a people enslaved,
we've become a mighty nation,
And I,
I am the son of a murdered father,
cousin to a murdered nation.
It never ends.They want us dead again.
Iran, Iraq, the Palestinians.
They want to kill my brothers,
my sisters, my children, my wife.
What did the warrior say?
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius,
Commander of the Armies of the North,
loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife.
And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.
Father to a murdered son. Son to a murdered father.
Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife.
And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.Except, except I will not.
I will not have my vengeance.
I've had enough death.
I will be vulnerable.
I knew a man once who said,
Death smiles at us all.
All a man can do is smile back.
And so I smile.
I remember everything.
I remember lines
from that movie.
What we do in life,
echoes in eternity.And so I will do something with my life.
And I will remember.
I will make my father proud.
I will savor every moment.
I am because of him.
I live because of him.
And so do they.He told his students to live.
Jump out the windows and live.
And I know
they will live and
they will remember.
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