Oratorio Terezin Text: Part 2

GOD:
I remember the devotion of your youth,
Your love as a bride,
How you followed me in the wilderness
In a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord? (Jeremiah 2:2)

TEREZIN
Mif 1944

The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere inside our memories.

We've suffered here more than enough,
Here in this clot of grief and shame,
wanting a badge of blindness
To be a proof for their own children.

A fourth year of waiting, like standing above a swamp
From which any moment might gush forth a spring.

Meanwhile the rivers flow another way,
Another way,
Not letting you die, not letting you live.

And the cannons don't scream and the guns don't bark
And you don't see blood here.
Nothing, only silent hunger.
Children steal the bread here and ask and ask
and ask
And all would wish to sleep, keep silent and
just to go to sleep again

The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere inside our memories

Full choir
O God, do not keep silence, do not hold Your peace or be still O God!
Even now Your enemies are in tumult, those who hate You have raised their heads.they say "Come, let us wipe them out as a nation, let the name of Israel be remembered no more" (Psalm 83 1-2 & 4)

TEREZIN
(Hanus Hachenburg- b.Prague July 12th 1929.deported to Terezin October 24th 1942.d.Auschwitz Dec.18th,1943)

That bit of filth in dirty walls,
And all around barbed wire,
And 30,000 souls who sleep
Who once will wake
And once will see
Their own blood spilled.

I was once a little child,
Three years ago.
That child who longed for other worlds.
But now I am no more a child
For I have learned to hate.
I am a grown up person now,
I have known fear.

Bloody words and a dead day then,
That's something different from bogie men!

But anyway, I still believe I only sleep today,
That I'll wake up, a child again, and start to laugh and play.
I'll go back to childhood sweet like a briar rose,
Like a bell which wakes us from a dream,
Like a mother with an ailing child
Loves him with aching woman's love.
How tragic, then, is youth which lives
With enemies, with gallows ropes,
How tragic, then, for children on your lap
To say; this for the good, that for the bad.

Somewhere, far way out there, childhood sweetly sleeps,
Along that path among the trees,
That o'er that house
Which was once my pride and joy.
there my mother gave me birth into this world
So I could weep.

In the flame of candles by my bed, I sleep
And once perhaps I'll understand
That I was such a little thing,
As little as this song.

These 30.000 souls who sleep
Among the trees will wake,
Open an eye
And because they see
A lot
They'll fall asleep again..

Full Choir
Iam shut in so that I cannot escape,
My eyes grow dim through sorrow.
Every day I call on You O Lord, I spread out my hands to you. (Psalm 88:8)
O Lord, why do you cast me off?
Why do You hide Your face from me? (Psalm 88:14)

You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your record?
In God I trust; I am not afraid,
What can a mere mortal do to me? (Psalm 56 v.8 & 11)

IT ALL DEPENDS ON HOW YOU LOOK AT IT
Miroslav Kosek b.March 30th, 1932,Horelice,Bohemia,deported toTerezin Feb.15th 1942
d.Auschwitz October 19th 1944)

Terezin is full of beauty.
it's in your eyes now clear
And through the street the tramp
Of many marching feet I hear.

In the ghetto at Terezin,
It looks that way to me,
Is a square kilometre of earth
Cut off from the world that's free.

Death after all, claims everyone,
You find it everywhere.
it catches up with even those
Who wear their noses in the air.

The whole wide world is ruled
With a certain justice, so
That helps perhaps to sweeten
The poor man's pain and woe.

Full Choir and children
God is a refuge for us.
those of low estate are but a breath,
Those of high estate are a delusion
in the balance they go up,
they are together lighter than a breath?..(Psalm 62: 8-9)

O Lord, you God of vengeance,
You God of vengeance, shine forth!
Rise up O Judge of the earth.
Give to the proud what they deserve!
O Lord, how long shall the wicked,
How long shall the wicked exult? (Psalm 94: 1-3)

Oratorio Terezin Website © 2006 Ruth Fazal/Tributary Music, 296 Glebemount Ave, Toronto, Ontario M4C 3V3 Canada