• About Us
• News & Events
• Virtual Museum
  • CHGS Exhibitions
  • Artistic Responses
  • Holocaust Memorials
  • Related Exhibits
• Educational Resources
• Histories & Narratives
• Websites & Bibliography
• Giving Opportunities

Home > Virtual Museum > CHGS Exhibitions > Bittersweet Legacy : Counting Backwards (1973)

Counting Backwards (1973)

"Only in Dreams" by Cynthia Moskowitz Brody

Counting Backwards (1973)

Evelyn Posamentier

you & your sisters said I had the head of a thirty year old
at 6, I believed you, you were my mother,
& an orthodox jew doesn't lie; you said this
& I heard you, thru my tears as you
dragged me to the synagogue-
the unwanted dress squeezed tighter than a boa.

At 13, when my suicide face hung plain as the ironed
shirts that you folded away so neatly,
I asked
& you turned away,
I cried
& you snapped on the radio--
we always ate lunch quietly.

At 16, when I exposed the nightly horror films that entered my life
without knocking, you said that I
thought too much, was influenced by the wrong crowd
didn't really have much to complain about considering
I didn't come from a broken home (or anything like that)

& besides, what did I think the young girls
did in dachau?