Fran Albrecht, Slovenia, biography

Summary

Fran Albrecht was born in 1889 in Kamnik, Slovenia. The Slovenian poet, critic, and essayist was deported to Dachau on January 8, 1944 (prisoner number 60,980) and remained there until its liberation in 1945. The poem included here was written immediately after the liberation, in commemoration of the concentration camp of Dachau. It was first published in the Slovenian weekly journal TV-15, no. 17–18 on April 29, 1976. The handwritten manuscript is located in the National Museum of Contemporary History (previously the Museum of the People's Revolution) in Ljubljana. Fran Albrecht died in 1963 in Ljubljana.

Dachau

Potomcem sveta

Mi, ki prišli smo živi iz pekla

fašističnega razčlovečenja,

smo dolžni vam—sopotnikom gorja,

ki z nami upali ste in trpeli,

da še kdaj kot ljudje bi zaživeli,

a ste v nasilni smrti onemeli—

da kliknemo vsem narodom sveta:

Ta kraj je bil preklet. Ta kraj je svet.

Ta kraj je posvečen od muk in groze.

In poveličan v mučeniški slavi

od neizmerne nečloveške smrti.

Zato, popotnik, stopaj tiho tod.

Pobožno stopaj, s sklonjeno glavo.

Pot, ki ga stopaš, je bil križev pot.

Dachau

To the World's Descendants

We who have come through the hell

of fascist dehumanization,

we owe it you—sojourners of our woe

who suffered with us and hoped

to one day resume life as people,

but succumbed to a violent death—

to declaim to all the nations of the world:

This space was cursed. This space is holy.

This space has been hallowed in terror and pain.

Exalted in the torturous glory

of countless inhuman deaths.

Traveler, pass through this space in silence.

Go reverently, head bowed.

For you are treading the way of the cross.

—Translated by Michael Biggins