Teenage Holocaust victim’s poetry translated into Welsh

A Welsh book publisher has brought out a translation into Welsh of the poetry of Selma Merbaum (1924-1942), who died of typhus in an SS labour camp at the age of eighteen.

Selma was brought up in Czernowitz, then in Rumania and now in Ukraine. Since Czernowitz was formerly the capital of Bukovina, the most eastern of the possessions of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Selma grew up multi-lingual, but German was the language of her home and the language of most of her literary work.

Selma and the rest of her family were ultimately among the six million European Jews killed as part of the Shoah (Holocaust).

Her poetry survived only because it was smuggled out of the ghetto in Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) by a friend, who intended to have it published in Israel, though he died en route to Israel and Selma was subsequently forgotten.

Rediscovery

Her poetry was rediscovered in the late 1970s in an Archive in Tel Aviv however, and subsequently published in its original German and other languages.

Mary Burdett-Jones, a poet who has translated many poems from German, first heard of Selma in after the atrocities committed in Israel on 7th October 2023 and was touched by her greatest poem, a young woman’s plea against war: 

Paham y rhua’r canonau?

Maent yn marw,

pentyrrau ohonynt.

Nid atgyfodant eto…

Rwyf am fyw.

Dros nos

byddaf farw.

“Why do the canons roar? . . . 

They are dying, heaps of them.
They will never rise again. . . . 

I want to live . . . 

overnight I will be dead.” 

Enduring

The ongoing relevance of such sentiments is clear in the light of the ensuing war in which so many people have died in Gaza.

The music of the poems appealed to Mary as Selma described the play of light on a cut-glass cup as being ‘as bright as the sound of a thousand little sleigh bells’, and said of shiny chestnuts that she heard them ‘like sparkling études’.

A poet’s poet, she described the creative process as a musician or composer would.

In the book’s introduction Mary explains that in translating she tried to keep in mind the description of the ‘sing-song’ way Paul Celan, a distant cousin of Selma’s, read his poems.

She doesn’t use rhyme in her translations but employs rhythm, assonance and alliteration to create a lyric effect. Selma’s poems have been translated into many languages and are now part of world literature.

Selma divided her book ‘Blütenlese’ (Flower Harvest) into sections under titles such as ‘Red Carnations’. One of these titles, ‘Tea Flowers’, referring to the bundles of tea leaves and flowers which open up when boiling water is poured on them, was taken for the inspiration for one of the pictures by Paul Burdett on the cover.

Hopes

Mary hopes that the translation of Selma’s poems will similarly open them up to the reader.

This new volume forms part of Melin Bapur’s Clasuron Byd—World Classics—series, launched this year as a part of the new press’s central goal to publish more translations into Welsh for adults.

As editor, Adam Pearce explains: “Selma’s poetry is truly wonderful in Mary’s translations. This is exactly the sort of text we wanted to make available in Welsh.

“If you can read German poetry in English translation, then why not in Welsh as well? There is a wealth of world literature out there and the Welsh-language press has barely scratched the surface.”

Cerddi 1939-1941 by Selma Merbaum is priced at £7.99 and published by Melin Bapur books and available online from their website, www.melinbapur.cymru, or as an eBook from common eBook providers including Kindle and Apple Books.

Melin Bapur’s books are also available from a range of bookshops across Wales.