# Dutch/Example 12

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Intermediate level: cycle 3 Voorbeeld 12 ~ Example 12
Oorlogsgedicht ~ War Poetry
* • De achttien doden

## Jan Campert (1902 - 1943)

Jan Campert was a journalist, writer, poet and resistance fighter during the nazi occupation of the Netherlands that lasted from May 10, 1940 till May 5, 1945.
In 1941 he wrote the following poem on the occasion of the execution of 18 resistance people on the Waalsdorpervlakte. He puts himself in the position on one of them in a rather stark fashion. He himself was arrested trying to smuggle a Jewish person into Belgium a year later and was sent first to the concentration camp Buchenwald and then to Neuengamme where he died from pleurisy.
A cell is only two meters long and scarcely two meters wide. Even smaller is the plot of land that I do not know yet but where I will rest without name. My buddies as well. We were 18 in number. None shall witness the evening.
O loveliness of light and land, of Holland's free coast. Once overwhelmed by the enemy I did not find rest for even an hour. What can a sincere and loyal man still do in such a time? He kisses his child, he kisses his wife and fights the idle fight.
I knew the task I had begun, a task laden with hardship, bu the heart that could do no other thing never shies away from danger. It knows how once freedom was honored in this land, before the cursed hand of the rapist desired it otherwise.
Before he who breaks oaths and blusters, had the gall to invade Holland's lands and hold its soil to ransom; before he who claims honor and such Germanic comforts, forced our people under his sway and plundered it like a thief.
The Rat Catcher of Berlin pipe s his melody now- As surely as I will be dead shortly and will not see the beloved and may not brak bread and sleep with her again- reject all that he offers or offered, that sly fowler.
Remember you who reads these words my buddies in their need and those who are closest to them in their great distress, like we remembered our own land and people- There dawns a day after every night and every cloud passes by.
I see how the first light of morning creeps through the high window. My God, if I have failed, as any man can fail, grant me then your mercy, so that I may walk to my death as a man when I face the barrels.

## End of cycle 3

You have reached the end of the third cycle and are midway the Intermediate Level of this course. Congratulations!