The Survivor

In 1939 a thirteen year old Jewish girl from Essen, Germany, - Anneliese Katz - arrived in England. Her parents had managed to send her there to stay with relations, but they themselves could not emigrate, and were murdered in Chelmno, Poland, five years later. Anneliese went to school, then trained to be a nurse. She met, and married, a Sri Lankan Post-graduate and settled down with him in Sri Lanka. In 1956 she became a Sri Lankan citizen. She later became a poet and writer. She was sent to England in "kindertransport", used widely at that time to transport children to safety, when she was thirteen. When she was eighteen, she found out that her parents had been killed. She is considered to be a survivor of the Holocaust... The pain and anguish caused by the Holocaust is potrayed often in her poems. Her poems are depressing, sad. It was her form of expressing herself.

This same person is coming to my school on Tuesday. We're supposed to ask her at least six questions, because we're doing in-depth research about the Holocaust. I can't think of any one question to ask her. Not because I don't know the facts but because I don't know what to say to her. So... any ideas?

Here is a little taste of her work: (Google Anne Ranasinghe for more info)

The Night Of The Tropical Storm

by Anne Ranasinghe

The night of the tropical storm
vaulting sheets of rain
tore through the trees, driven by a wind
so fierce that their high leafy crowns
twisted and tangled as they swayed and bent
under green forks of lightning.
Strangely they all survived

except my more than bush and not yet tree
grown from a seed found in the royal pleasure garden,
its blossom candles flickering red fire
among the feathery foliage
and swinging spiky long brown pods.
There was a regal glory
about this glowing bush against the mossy wall.

The morning after
I found its slumped, shapeless pitiful -
dead at my feet, blossoms already withered,
its naked roots protruding shamelessly
from the ripped soil. A rain-washed sun
shed honey-colour light while squirrels played
wild games through splintered branches

cracking the pods and scattering small hard seeds.

I Speak

by Anne Ranasinghe

I Speak
not with the language of those
who know all the answers
but with the words of the helpless
searching for images
that drift through memory
to make a home-coming
out of exile.
For even in the promised land
I am a stranger.

Eternal fugitive
from a native landscape
I carry with me
the marks of all my sojourns
the tension
between past and present
and guilt
at breaking tradition:
betrayal of the generations.
No one can restore
what has been lost.

It is in forgetting
that we can live our daily lives
but we must survive
in order to remember.