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Kafka's Little SisterLast night as I was trying to sleep I thought to myself that I really should write a poem about Kafka’s little sister. Then I started worrying that
maybe someone already had. I find it hard to believe that no lines have been written about Ottla, the favorite youngest of his doomed three sisters-- dark-eyed, Ashkenazi maidens of Parizska Street. Franz drowned in his own blood in 1924 Never to see the totalitarian nightmares of his stories and novels made real just a few years later His father Herman escaped the fate of his daughters This man who tormented his fragile, tubercular son blind to his genius, forcing him to work in an office pushing paper and balancing books. (not that there is anything wrong or bad with working in an office and balancing books but I think the world would have been all right with one less office worker) But Ottila, little Ottla, Franz’s favorite went rogue, defying the family in a way her brother never could marrying a Catholic for love She was abolished, considered ‘dead’ in that brutal, absolute old world way But being married to a Catholic couldn’t save her in the end when the Brown Shirts marched across Europe and into Prague In 1942, Ottie, kind and tender Ottla, volunteered to escort a transport of 1,000 children from Thereisenstadt to …. She wished to comfort the children and keep them calm as they journeyed to what she believed was safety And so early one morning, in the chilly darkness, Ottie and her little daughters boarded a cattle car on the outskirts of the city along with a 1,000 tearful and terrified children who were never heard from again Oh Ottie, sweet and mischievous sprite, your brother’s favorite, the light of his dark life. Don’t you know there was no way you could dry all those tears? CommentsComments are closed.
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