I am a Jew.
I have been a ship turned away (1)
To face the cold spray
Of a cloudy ocean, misty train,
Windowless chamber full of gas;

I’ve seen how it starts and how it ends,
How long before your friends
Betray you, condemn you,
Hate builds the prison where you’ll die.

I am a Jew.
My soul is scattered like ashes,
Like pain, like flashes
Of lightning and thunder
On the Night of Broken Glass:

I am the hungry, the poor,
And when to my battered door
Come the landless, the dispossessed,
I know that my home is a refuge from death.

(1) In 1939 the MS St. Louis, carrying 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, was turned away from the U.S. because of immigration restrictions. “Later, more than 250 of those passengers were killed during…the Holocaust.” “Remembering Refugees Turned Away From the U.S. In 1939,” WBUR