Peter Walks for Democracy

Tonight I joined eight skilled poets for Poems from Life, a celebration of the lives of men and women living at Juniper Village. Juniper is a senior living center near State College, Pennsylvania. For the second year, staff at the Pennsylvania’s Center for the Book worked with Juniper to partner poets with the men and women who live at Juniper so that their stories and spirits could be told in poetry. It was nothing shy of wonderful, dignifying in the extreme and all done with expertly-crafted poems: some clever, some funny, some defiant, and all of them touching. [When the video comes, I’ll post.]

I was blessed to be partnered with Ernest Bergman (picture below). Ernie was born in Germany 95 years ago. His father died when he was very young and he was raised by his mother. A Jew, he and his family lived in Switzerland for a time. However, his work was limited, but he found that he had great skill in agriculture. Eventually, he had to flee Nazi-occupied Europe since “the bastards” would not conscript him and would have sent him to a death camp. He fled in a harrowing journey through multiple countries and made his way to New York. From there he worked his way into college, eventually earning a PhD, and then became a Professor in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. Amazingly, he also became a Ferguson Township supervisor…just like me! I had no idea when we met.

Interspersed in all of this, of course, are tales of he and his wife, their indomitable love, and his joy in traveling the world. He’s the kind of person who you wonder, “Do you ever sleep?” His accomplishments were so far-ranging that it boggles the mind.

A few months ago, I sat down with Ernie to interview him for a couple of hours. The minutiae don’t matter. What matters to me today is how much Ernie’s experience as a hated minority, a Jew, and a strong and determined refugee to the matter speak to our time today. He was a man without a home, but who found a home in the United States. Turned into something of the archetype of the wandering Jew, he found home in Pennsylvania. I’m so glad he did.

 

A MAN WHO CAME HOME

Deutschland                            called.

In ’39, der Vaterland   called its men to reign.

Bergman, he was         called.

Israel Bergman.

He was                        called.

The paper saidhe must

hear the                                   call and come home and enlist.

He sent the paper back to Bern.

Ernest Leopold Israel Bergman he was

                                                called.

The paper came back from the bastards. The paper

labeled him

stateless                      labeled him

a refugee

a Jew.

Israel.

His father died when he was three, his brother three months.

He was a man with no vater and no

Vaterland.

You,                            Israel,

will become like Mahler,

homeless and   stateless

a                                  Jew throughout the world

consigned to    wander as

a man without a country.

But his home               he knew           was in soils across the sea     and past the war

past                Basel               Luxembourg                Belgium           France

How can I get past? How much does it cost?[Money in hand.]

No. No monsieur.[Visa stamped.]

past Holland

to New York

soon to become a man who was

called

home.