Victory by Sonia Weitz

Victory
by Sonia Weitz

I danced with you that time only.
How sad you were, how tired, lonely...
You knew that they would "take" you soon...
So when your bunk-mate played a tune
You whispered: "little one, let us dance,
We may not have another chance."

To grasp this moment...sense the mood;
Your arms around me felt so good...
The ugly barracks disappeared
There was no hunger...and no fear.
Oh what a sight, just you and I,
My lovely father (once big and strong)
And me, a child...condemned to die.

I thought: how long
before the song
must end

There are no tools
to measure love
and only fools

Would fail
to scale
your victory.




This poem touched me because I can imagine that if I was going to lose my father, how devastated I would be. One of my favorite lines in this poem is 'little one, let us dance, we may not have another chance.' I loved this because again, I can't directly relate to it but the despair that would've filled me if I had to have just one last dance with my father would be huge. When I read this poem, I pictured a withering away father and a withering away daughter enjoying their last moments together.  They were dancing for the last time, with hope in their eyes and the terrible background of 'ugly barracks' fading away. I think the mood or feel of this poem was hope. The name of this piece is Victory because Weitz might have finally felt like she had one small 'victory' against the Nazis and the terrible things they were doing to the Jews. The fact that she was able to sneak into the men's camp and find her father was most probably the treasure that gave her the will to keep holding onto life throughout the bad things that happened to her in the rest of the holocaust. 'Only fools would fail to scale your victory.'