Remembering Irka

International Holocaust Remembrance Day   January 27, 2021

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She stands in line with the other prisoners at Auschwitz.
She is Jewish, blue eyes, barely in her twenties.
Her name is Irka.

 
Irka was my mother-in-law. I loved her. And she loved me back. She told me her stories, and I wrote them down.  And then she wrote some her own.
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Life in Lodz ghetto
 
   wasn’t easy
  
     people are dying from
 
hunger and disease
.
            My mother is sick
 
   with typhoid fever
 
           I take care of her
 
       I am her care giver
 
          But I couldn’t save
 
    her and she died
 
peacefully
 
    She was a good mother
 
   I loved her dearly.

 Irene (Irka) Winograd Furst
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​Mom passed away on November 30, 2019. I miss her.

​Quietly...
​into the night
the poet slips away
washing the sand
from her feet

Susan Beth Furst
​December 1, 2019


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​Autumn Leaf, photograph by Susan Beth Furst 2021
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