Schoolboys In 1939 Comments

A very moving poem by a poet of merit

Dear Michael, I know a schoolboy who was in the Warsaw ghetto.. his father was killed.. his mother and he were separated .. he was taken to an Italian orphanage.. Years later, wanting to continue making a more compassionate world he founded the Meatout His name is Alex Hershaft meatout.dot org

Your poem is a 1939 photo, not just of schoolboys in London and Poland. You give us, in well chosen compressed words, a photo of Spetember in 1939. The tension is created by comparing the two cities. Thr appeasement policy of the Munich Pact was as ineffective in stopping the Gernans as the Maginot Line. You don't have to say Germany invaded Poland September 1,1939. Your 'photo' does an effective and poetic job. Tom

different prospects in different places yet all would be involved in the slaughter sooner or later. I was a schoolboy in 1939 too young to understand what it meant when we declared war on Germany but I soon learnt Tyneside was a favourite target for the German Bombers

Well done, Dan. A real sense of foreboding... Don

Makes one think of what we are doing right now while wars in other parts of the world are raging.

You have given new dimensions to this photograph with your poem - spare and economical like many I have read of yours. The dimension of space - spreading out across Europe - and time - looking forward to the future of these boys and looking backwards for ourselves, at the past for us and the future for them. Moving, evocative but not sentimental - I like this.

What a coincidence it might be if the photographer were Chuichi Nagumo. We all stroll in the sunshine without any thought of the impending rain. Enjoyed. Thanks.