This chapter presents “The Lament of My Mother” (1941), a poem written by Yosl Mlotek either before he arrived in Shanghai or shortly after he reached China in the summer or early fall of 1941. The loneliness of the young man is palpable in the poem. But it is more than homesickness, longing for family and familiar places, that can be heard in the poem. There is also concern for loved ones with whom all contact was lost by 1941. To be sure, news from Poland trickled through to Shanghai; there was the English-language press and the Russian news service at the Soviet embassy. But this was not...

This chapter presents “The Lament of My Mother” (1941), a poem written by Yosl Mlotek either before he arrived in Shanghai or shortly after he reached China in the summer or early fall of 1941. The loneliness of the young man is palpable in the poem. But it is more than homesickness, longing for family and familiar places, that can be heard in the poem. There is also concern for loved ones with whom all contact was lost by 1941. To be sure, news from Poland trickled through to Shanghai; there was the English-language press and the Russian news service at the Soviet embassy. But this was not personal news. The Polish refugees, when they met one another, must have agonized over the fate of their loved ones.