Roman Gebler, Germany, biography

Summary

Roman Gebler was born in 1896 in a German settlement near Lódz. Gebler had studied art, but his training was interrupted during the First World War by his internment in 1916. He later continued his studies in Berlin. As a painter, study visits across Europe followed. He was arrested as a socialist in 1933, then deported to the Flossenbürg and Dachau concentration camps (prisoner number 72).

After his liberation from Dachau in April 1945, he lived in Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, working as a fine artist. The following three poems are taken from his collection Aus dämmernden Nächten, which appeared in 1947. The publisher added an explanatory note to the edition, which, like so many others, was published as a one-off edition with a very short print run: “The following poems are not echoes of peaceful days and hours of solitude,—no, they came into being among the noise, fear, pain, and death of the concentration camp.”

Leben

(Dachau 1933)

Ich will es ertragen

und in mir behalten, was du mir gebracht.—

Dem einsamen Raunen in dämmernder Nacht

nur will ich es sagen.—

Ich werd’ es ertragen,

denn noch ist in mir nicht das Hoffen zerbrochen.—

Noch hör’ ich die Stimme, die in mir gesprochen:

Du mußt es ertragen!

In einsamen Tagen,

wenn brennend die Sehnsucht mich droht zu ersticken—

mich auch keine Freude vermag zu beglücken:

Dann werd’ ich es tragen.—

Wenn Träume mich jagen,

Erinnyen meine Gedanken umschweben,

im Traume des Nachts mich die Parzen umgeben—

Ich werd’ es ertragen.—

Dir will ich es sagen:

“Der du uns zum Sterben das Kleid hast gewebt,

bedenke—ich habe noch gar nicht gelebt

und muß dies ertragen!”

Dir will ich es klagen:

“Der du unser Hoffen und Sehnen vernimmst

und über das Schicksal im Weltall bestimmst—

Ich werd’ es ertragen!”

Life

(Dachau 1933)

I'll bear this weight.

What you give me I'll hold inside.

Lonely rustling in the evening twilight,

I've something to say—

I'll take on this weight.

My hope is still unbroken.

A voice inside starts speaking:

You've no choice but this weight.

On lonely days,

when yearning's a fire and I think I'll choke,

and pleasure's impossible, I know

I'll carry this weight.

When dreams hunt me,

and furies hover about my thoughts,

and spirits surround my nights,

I'll bear this weight.