Today I visited one of the Internal Medicine wards at Meir Hospital. The rooms were full. The corridors were full with seriously ill patients, in some instances surrounded by makeshift curtains.
It's flu season in Israel.
The elderly suffer the most.
Who are these elderly
Lying in their makeshift beds?
The tattered remnant.
Survivors of the Holocaust.
They came to find refuge
But were forced to fight wars.
"What's your profession?"
I inquired of one.
"A shoemaker," he replied,
" In the camps, I worked with leather."
Through the curtains
The wrinkled, tired, flesh.
The hacking coughs
The very soft groans.
Trained in childhood
To suffer in silence,
They don't complain
And they don't shout out.
"From the ship
they sent us to the front
some got guns, some uniforms,
there weren't enough to get both".
"1951, and discharge from Zahal.
No medals, no benefits, no job.
We were survivors
And we survived".
You pass the beds and
Forlorn eyes watch you pass.
Your white coat, the symbol
Of their despair.
The poem was written in winter 2002, in Kfar Saba.