A Running Away Poem

This is part of a poem or narrative that I’ve written for some Year 11 dance students at a school in Cambridge. They’re going to devise a dance about Oscar and Rachel, who are my father’s uncle and aunt.

While you’re reading this, you might want to imagine two people, one Oscar, one Rachel. They are about 40 years old and they got married only a short while before this story begins.

The were both born in Poland but live in France at the time of the poem. France is occupied at this time by the German army. Instructions have come from Germany that French Jews have to be rounded up, sent to a camp called Drancy and from there they are deported on trains, in cattle trucks with no food, no water and no toilets.

People don’t really know where these trains are going – though we know now that it was Auschwitz, a place that was a mixture of a factory, a hard-labour camp, a place of torture, starvation, disease and extermination.

At the time of the poem, the only thing that people know is that these trains are going and no one seems to be coming back. They gave this place a nonsense name. They called it ‘Pitchipoï’. People said, ‘We won’t go to Pitchipoï’ or in French, ‘Nous n’irons pas à Pitchipoï’.

My father’s aunt and uncle are on the run in the poem.

We’re coming up now to what’s called Refugee Week. There are millions of people all over the world who are or were refugees, people running away from war, persecution and starvation.

This poem and the dance-piece is going to be for Refugee Week in the Corn Exchange, Cambridge in June.

When you read the poem, you could have a try at writing a ‘running away poem’. You could imagine yourself, or people in your family running away. Or perhaps, you know someone who has run away. Or perhaps you or people in your family have run away.

See if you can write a poem in that person’s voice. Or, in the voice of two people (which the long version of this poem does. It speaks with two voices.)

Oscar and Rachel

Rachel and I talk.
We won’t go to Pitchipoï
We will go to Nice.

If we go, and we’re on the road
and the police, or the army
or the special security men
find us
we will be arrested and sent away on a train.

Do we stay here and wait for the soldiers to send us away on a train
or do we go?

We decide to go.

We are the only ones who know how we do this.
We don’t send a message to America.

Imagine us
ripping off our yellow stars
and throwing them away.

Imagine us
running in the night,
sleeping in the fields
sleeping in barns
begging farmers to take us in.

Imagine us
hitching lifts from a horse and cart
going to market.
borrowing bikes till they break down.
begging for food
begging for clothes
selling Rachel’s rings

Imagine that I tell some people
I can mend their clocks
and they give me a few francs
and we buy some bread.

But we have to keep moving.

Anyone who helps us
is in danger
If the police or the soldiers
see what they’re doing
they could be arrested
or sent away
or shot.

Imagine us
asking people the way
to the next town.

Imagine us
pretending to be someone else.
But we know we have Polish accents.
We have to pretend we are not Jewish.

It’s hard to know
who is helping the soldiers
and who is against them
in the Resistance, as people call it.

Imagine us moving in the night.
The stars watch us.
The trees watch us.
The cows and horses in the fields
watch us.

We have to keep going.
Only in Nice will we be safe.
We won’t go to Pitchipoï

And we get to Nice.
We arrive.

Imagine us
walking the streets
hand in hand
Imagine us
pretending to be film stars
strolling on the promenade
overlooking the Baie des Anges
the Bay of Angels.

We see that Nice has filled up
with Jewish refugees.
We’re safe.
There are soldiers.
Italian soldiers
but they’re not going to arrest us
or send us away.

Imagine them
sharing their rations with us.

We stay in a hotel
and it is, as they said.
People sleeping in the corridors.

There’s food here from the Red Cross.
We eat under great chandeliers.
We sit on the grand staircase.

We imagine film stars dancing in the ballroom
We wonder what is happening to Martin.
Where is he?
Where is our brother?
What’s happening in Poland?
What’s happening in London?

Imagine us
Rachel and me
Me and Oscar
we dance in the empty ballroom
We pretend that a band is playing.
And we dance.
A waltz.
A foxtrot.
A Charleston.
We imagine the music.
We are so happy…