June 13 • 2019 17
jn

continued on page 18

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Two poems from May 1944 unite
three generations of women.

O

n May 11, 1944, 75 years 
ago, Bertha Weinschenk 
celebrated her 75th birthday in 
Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration 
camp and ghetto. A group of her 
friends presented her with an 
original poem in German, specially 
composed in honor of her birthday, 
handwritten on a piece of cardboard. 
The poem praises her courage and 
skills; it ends with a blessing that, 
given the circumstances, must have 
seemed unlikely: And long live Mother 
Weinschenk/And the children and 
grandchildren beside her. 
Nine friends signed the poem.
The German commandants 
had already begun “embellishing” 
the camp, to make it an attractive 
showcase for the Danish and Swedish 
Red Cross to inspect in five weeks. As 
part of embellishing, SS Col. Karl 
Rahm, to ease overcrowding, shipped 
elderly or sick inmates to be murdered 
at Birkenau. Three of the women who 
signed the poem were sent to their 
deaths in the next week (along with 
thousands of other inmates). Another 
three of the women were shipped east 
for murder in October. One signed 
only the last name, Hamburger; several 
doomed Jews with that last name are 
listed among those murdered. Two 
signers survived.
Bertha Weinschenk’
s daughter, 
Hannah Weinschenk-Buehler, and her 
daughter, Ilse, had fled Nazi Germany 
in May 1940 and were living in Detroit 

at that time. Three days after Bertha 
received her poem in Theresienstadt, 
her granddaughter in America, Elsie (a 
new Americanized name) celebrated 
her 16th birthday on May 14, 1944. 
For that occasion, her mother, 
Hannah, composed a German poem, 
as if written by her teenage daughter 
(see below): 

continued on page 18

Dear Mother, believe me,
Now that I am grown, 
don’
t give a thought about 
counting on me
You can do all the work, 
and I can do all the play. 
I can relax in my chair,
and listen to soap operas 
all day
I can read as many comic 
books as I like. 
So it goes in life, as the 
world turns,
That hard-working 
mothers
get lazy daughters.

Four generations: Grandmother Hannah 

Weinschenk-Buehler, great-grandmother 

Bertha Weinschenk holding her first 

great-grandchild Jack and mother Elsie 

Simkovitz, pregnant with her second son, Dan. 

Historic Verse

jews d
in 
the

Dan the 
Creature Man 

5:45-6:15pm

Shabbat 
Dinner 
6:15-7:00pm

Donut 
Bar 

7:45-8:15pm

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www.temple-israel.org/playandpray 

*Dinner reservations must be made by Monday, June 17. 

Questions? Contact Devorah at devorah@temple-israel.org

DATE 
CHANGE!

Musical Shabbat 
Service

7:00-7:45pm

Thanks to the Schelberg Family Shabbat Birthday Fund, 
 children 12 and under who are celebrating their birthday this month 
will receive the gift of a Jewish book!

FRIDAY 
JUNE 21, 2019

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Join us for a family-friendly summer service!

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