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Franc Dermastja-Som, Slovenia, biography

from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

Edited by
Dorothea Heiser  and
Stuart Taberner
Dorothea Heiser
Affiliation:
Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg
Stuart Taberner
Affiliation:
Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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Summary

Franc Dermastja-Som was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1919. He was deported to Dachau on January 20, 1944, and registered as prisoner number 102,246. He was sent from there to the concentration camp at Natzweiler and was then returned to Dachau, from which he was later freed.

This poem was written in April 1945, shortly before liberation.

Skupen Grob

Tisoč mož, več, še več

leži v eni jami,

kot polena nametani

skupaj bodo pokopani.

Prst vas bo zasula,

v usta vam bo rila,

še mrtve vas dušila

zemlja tuja in nemila.

IV, 1945

Shared Grave

A thousand men, more, and yet more

lying in a single pit,

strewn about like firewood

together will be buried.

The soil will bury you,

into your mouth it will rush

choking you, even in death

in an unkind, foreign land.

April, 1945 —Translated by Kristina Zdravič Reardon and Matevž Kersnik
Type
Chapter
Information
My Shadow in Dachau
Poems by Victims and Survivors of the Concentration Camp
 , pp. 97 - 100
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2014

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