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from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2018
Bojan Ajdič was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1921. On March 19, 1944, the twenty-three-year-old Slovenian teacher was taken to Dachau, where he was registered as prisoner number 65,715. He was freed when Dachau was liberated in 1945.
The following poem was written under the title “Last Day” on December 31, 1944, when the author received his first letter from home. Later he changed and expanded the poem, gave it the title “Premonition,” and published it under the pseudonym “Blajc” in the journal Borec in 1954. The author preserved the original handwritten draft along with a calendar of the years 1944–45 in a pocket notebook.
Slutnja
Zadnji mesec v letu
in v njem zadnji dan—
pa prejel sem prvo pismo.
Kaj, če bil bi že sežgan
v tem tujem svetu,
kjer ljudje več nismo?
Ne tega dne—
že davno prej je legla
dachauska megla
na misli, na moje srce!
Ne ljudje, ne živali, ne bilke
—zdaj smo tukaj le številke …
Zadnji mesec,
v letu zadnji dan,
a komaj prvo pismo …
In v njem pozdrav
v obetajoči sreči:
“Ljubi moj, si zdrav?”
Je kasni ta pozdrav
tudi zadnji iz domovine?
Do drugega lahko izgine
moj skelet v skeletov peči …
“Si zdrav, si zdrav?”
O, zdrav sem, zdrav,
čeprav v nemoči
telo se sloči …
Zdrav sem, zdrav,
če zdravje moč je za pozdrav
in klic za zadnje maščevanje:
“Dachau, prekleti Dachau!”
Preden pa pride iz daljav
v pismu drugi pozdrav
zame, med tisoči mrtvo bilko,
—bodo v taborišču Dachau
mojo že izbrisali številko …
Premonition
The last month of the year
and the last day of that—
and here's my first letter.
What if I'd already been burned
in this alien world
where we're not even people?
It didn't just happen today—
long ago the fogs of Dachau
came to enshroud
my thoughts, my heart.
Not people, not animals, not even lumber
—here you become a mere number.
The last month,
last day of the year,
this first letter just makes it …
In its greeting a flicker
of happiness gleams,
“My darling, are you well?”
Will this late greeting
be the last one from home?
Before another comes, my bones
could perish in the bone-consuming oven …
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