May the World Arisen from Ashes Bear Fruit for Countless Generations

Dedicated to our dear father of blessed memory, Sigmond Shore (born Zygmunt Schorr) 1909-1967, engineer, economist, diplomat

Our father lost his first wife and child.

The Shoah took two hundred of his family;

Only, one cousin remained; yet, he began again;

Married, raised my brother and me with our mother.

As a partisan, after mining train tracks and bridges

To the concentration camps, to attempt

To curtail the diabolic inferno,

He returned to a home that no longer existed.

The stately house stood but his home was gone;

I visited the place that was but no longer is.

There, I imagined lullabies sung to his first child;

Walked away with what was and could have been.

I looked at my life’s rearview mirror and

See the road ahead, now with generations of joint loved ones;

And with my wife pray this world, arisen from ashes,

Blossoms and bears fruit for countless generations,

Sanctifying the dreams and hopes of lives lost

For the sacrifices of the past to be the last.

It is the task of our world to awaken its conscience,

Its barometer of morality and

Thermometer of ethics, not to perpetuate

Losses, but to guarantee life for a future reborn.