Two Holocaust Survivors with a UN Connection

Both escaped the Holocaust, finding their way to America in the 1960s, then to the United Nations, one as a reporter for the labor-oriented New York Yiddish daily Freiheit, the other as a correspondent for the fast-growing Israeli daily, the Yediot Achronot.

As struggling writers, both sought to advance their literary skills, one in poetry, the other in novels, most of them dealing with the Holocaust, the Six Million. Each formed a friendship with veteran UN correspondent David Horowitz who followed their developing but differing careers. Their paths diverged in widely different directions.

One was the struggling reporter-novelist, who like his colleague, had joined the UN Correspondents and Foreign Press Associations, both of which David Horowitz had served as president. He attained the greatest of all heights when he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the renowned Elie Wiesel, listed as Lazare Wiesel in the 1960’s UN Correspondents Directories. Author Wiesel’s history and the title of his multiple books are well known and have been widely publicized. He became a world figure through his writings about his personal Holocaust experiences.

The other, the reporter-poet who, during the Hitler period had managed to escape Poland for the Soviet Union, then to Italy and finally to the United States, was the humble and unassuming Wolf Pasmanik, a descendant of a famous family of scholars and rabbis. His mystical poetry reflects the tragedy of the Nazi period and the Holocaust and provokes a soul-searching criticism of the inhumanity and lack of justice among most nations.

I met Wolf Pasmanik for the first time in 1993 while attending a United Israel World Union function in New York. In fact, several of us within the organization remember him from those days at various organizational events in the 1990’s. Wolf was always present at our annual meetings. He was a reserved, unpretentious individual with rough-chiseled features and dark haunting eyes. I could tell his relationship with Horowitz was one of deep friendship and mutual respect. At most meetings, Horowitz would allow time on the agenda for Wolf to read one of his poems.

I never thought to ask Horowitz to tell me about Wolf. And now I wish I had. What I know about him I discovered in the myriad of papers and files in United Israel World Union and UN archived records.

Pasmanik won awards from the Yiddish Culture Organization and the Yiddish P.E.N. Club of New York for his book “Mayne Lider,” (My Poems). He was the only poet to have dedicated a poem in Yiddish to Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the author of “Babi Yar,” the epic account of the massacre of Russian Jews by the Nazis in a ravine outside Kiev. The book made Yevtushenko internationally famous, but landed him in trouble with the authorities at home. The poem suggested that anti-Semitism still lingered in the Soviet Union.

Pasmanik met Yevtushenko a few years later when the latter was in New York. He asked him how things were back at the Institute and the Russian replied. “They threw me out.”

Pasmanik also dedicated a poem to Premier Golda Meir of Israel, titled “The Jewish Warriors.” After sending a copy to her he received a letter of thanks in Hebrew from one of Mrs. Meir’s aides.

The Yiddish poet was often invited to give lectures on his unique poetry and was an active director of a poetry club. Though many of his poems were published frequently together with English translations in a number of Jewish publications, his own path to general recognition went in the opposite direction of his colleague Elie Wiesel. It receded over time. On occasions, the two old-time friends met and exchanged pleasantries.

I know from the archived records that Pasmanik carried a deep burden for those many faceless victims of Nazi atrocities and was afraid the memories would fade into history. His Yiddish poems on the subject, like the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen arrangement, reflected the torment of a troubled soul. I’m pleased to resurrect the following Pasmanik poem from the dustbin of old files and bring it into the light of day.

There Is No Monument In New York
(Translated from the Yiddish by Robert Kramer)

There is no Monument in New York
Nor memorial to our slain.
I walk with my grief alone
The two of us bent,
As dogs howl,
And write down my anguish
With the tears of my eyes
By the light of the setting sun.

There is no Monument in New York
The night is black and mute.
From all directions
On all the roads
The dead approach me.
For none could find their rest,
And have crawled unaided from their graves.

From their eye sockets they peer out,
Gaze, because they thirst
For redress.
But in New York there is no Monument.

The night is black and mute.
They approach from all directions
With bare and boney hands
They carry water and sand and cement.

The night is black and mute.
Shadows hover
In New York
In the city of steel and of concrete.
While the living are busy, involved
The dead bear sand and cement
To build the monument
For themselves
For the Six Million.

Today, there are multiple Holocaust Memorials located in New York, most erected in the past twenty years. They include the Holocaust Memorial Park in Brooklyn, the Memorial to Victims of the Injustice of the Holocaust, and the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Plaza, both in Manhattan. It’s an impressive array of testimonials to the fallen.

Maybe even impressive enough to lift a burden and bring a slight smile to the face of an old mystical Yiddish poet.