Old Jewish Cemetery. Prague. Thousands of gravestones are crammed here. Wikipedia.
By George Held:
The photo shows me sitting in the old Jewish cemetery behind my office At Charles University, not far From where gothic Charles Bridge Crosses Vltava, on a sunny fall day, And I am well aware about six layers Of dead Jews are stacked below me Because the Christian Czechs forbade The burial ground from expanding Beyond this space in the dense ghetto--keep The Jews in their place--before they were rousted And shipped to the extermination camps By the Nazis under General Heydrich, Who declared from his office in Prague Castle, High above the other side of the river, "We will Germanize the Czech vermin," Who had built this magnificent city In concentric circles around Romanesque Vysehrad Castle, making it a living Museum of European architecture. A friend took this picture of New World me Sitting in the heart of Old World Prague. George Held, Bleak Splendor (Brookline: Muddy River Press, 2016)
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: "Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BMV 1007: Prelude."
From Yo-Yo Ma "The Essential Yo-Yo Ma."
Thank you, Dr Goldfinger. Bach is a favorite, and Ma is a fine cellist.
From George Held: The New Yorker has been a leader in reporting the Ukraine story because of its editor, David Remnick, a non-religious Jew and a veteran Moscow correspondent for WaPo. I was weaned on fotos of dead & emaciated Jews in the camps, and now I am treated to the horrible victims of the Russians in Ukraine. If the human race survives, will it deserve to?
Editor’s note
Professor George Held spent 3 years in Czechoslovakia on a Fulbright grant. He taught in a university there. He is well aware of the Nazi atrocities there during WW II.
The movie Anthropoid (2016) is about the plot to kill the horrid Nazi in charge: Reinhard Heydrich.
George Held has published many books of poetry and he also is published regularly on Blogfinger.net.