Dora Circa the War Years

By Allison Whittenberg

For remembrance, the picture of her girlish dark-haired freshness
and a taut, three-paragraph bio was posted on a flagpole

For a week, students passed her, too wrapped in their own bad
days and stressors, their own crosses to bear, to notice

Hiding, maneuvering,
Creating a bottomless sense of chaos
Dora had spent her wonder years as a partisan
Making, makeshift weapons out of lost parts
Sleeping in forests
Using her trusty machine gun as a pillow

Evading, plotting,
breathing almost to the date of liberation
She had escaped the ghettos,
the trains rides, the liquidations
Until, too many Germans surrounded,
demanding they produce a Jew
Disarmed, momentary solidarity melted to basic instinct
Someone pointed out Dora

They bound her hands
Tied a rock to her neck
Threw her in the river
Then shot her twice

An empty, gray ending to a would-have-been
full, green life
Under other circumstances…

****

Allison Whittenberg won the John Steinbeck Writing Award, Judith Siegel Pearson Award, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. Her novels include Sweet Thang, Hollywood and Maine, Life is Fine, Tutored through Random House. Her collection of short stories Carnival of Reality and her novella Sane Ayslum were published by Apprentice Press. She currently teaches creative writing in Drexel University's MFA program.