Boris Slutsky
How did they kill my grandmother?..

How did they kill my grandmother?
I’ll tell you how they killed her.
On morning a tank rolled up to
a building where
one hundred and fifty Jews of our town who,
weightless
from a year’s starvation,
and white
with the knowledge of death,
were gatheredholding their bundles.
And the German polizei were
herding the old people briskly;
and their tin mugs clanked as
the young men led them away
far away.

But my small grandmother
my seventy-year old grandmother
began to curse and
scream at the Germans;
shouting that I was a soldier.
She yelled at them: My grandson
is off at the front fighting!
Don’t you dare
touch me!
Listen, you
can hear our guns!

Even as she went off, my grandmother
cried abuse,
starting all over again
with her curses.
From every window then
Ivanovnas and Andreyevnas
Sidorovnas and Petrovnas
sobbed: You tell them, Polina
Matveyevna, keep it up!
They all yelled together:
“What can we do against
this enemy, the Hun?”
Which was why the Germans chose
to kill her inside the town.

A bullet struck her hair
and kicked her grey plait down.
My grandmother fell to the ground.
This is how she died there.

Translated by unknown author