Locked in the Nazi Dollhouse of Death

by George Wallace

in hiding for two years in the south of france the nazi murderers
     breathing down her neck charlotte salomon
posed the question whether to commit suicide or ‘undertake
     something wildly unusual’
and deciding the latter painted 2000 images in gouache — humming
     faintly to herself all the while, and image by
image retelling in gouache the wondrous elements of her short life,
her first love, kristallnacht, stiff bearded men, f lowers in the pretty
     garden on the cottage grounds in
Villefranche-sur-Mer, her grandmother in the downstairs bathroom
at dawn, hanging by the neck,
     2000 images in gouache, is this life or theatre? asked charlotte and
     she kept on painting until the nazis came and
put her on the train to drancy, the same place they interned all
     the artists
tristan bernard the author
rene blum the choreographer
max jacob the poet
(yeah good old max, picasso’s hilarious pal, max with his colorful
     language max with his prose poems max with
his big fat groucho marx cartoon poet eyes — max jacob a
     surrealist’s surrealist coughing his lungs out into
pillowcases, his old i-saw-christ-now-i’m-a-catholic hoax didn’t
     fool no nazis)
and all of them in drancy internment camp, way-station to death
     for the lost merciful artists of france who got
caught being jews in those dark days —
poets and choreographers and painters in gouache, who suffered
     in silence like the consumptive puzzled children
they were, locked in the nazi dollhouse of death —
and charlotte sat among them and watched the wintershadows
     march in the courtyard day by day and stopped
humming —
until one day the nazis took her to auschwitz and gassed her
and fascism is very good at killing, isn’t it friends, very good
     indeed, so literal so methodical so businesslike and
efficient and clear!
but the fascists can’t always kill people the way they like to, at least
     not people who live their lives outside the
literal, in the metaphorical i mean —
take for example max jacob who got the last laugh — max jacob,
who shut his big fat groucho marx cartoon poet eyes for the last
     for the very last time in drancy internment camp
before the nazis could pull him out of his pillowcases and
     transport him to auschwitz
max jacob, who robbed the bastards thereby of their satisfaction
no they couldn’t
gas max