A Face Like Yours: A Romanian-French Poet Speaks to Us from the Grave

Remember only that I was innocent
and that, like all of you, mortals of this day,
I had, I too had a face marked
by rage, by pity and joy,
an ordinary human face!

Those are animals, they (Palestinians in Gaza) have no right to exist. I’m not arguing on how it should be done, but they need to be exterminated.

-Yoav Kisch, Israeli Minister of Education (October 9, 2023)

In a stroke of serendipity, I recently stumbled upon Preface in Prose (Préface en prose), the most famous poem written by Benjamin Fondane (1898-1944), a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, who was also known for his work in film and theater. Born Benjamin Wechsler in Iași, the cultural capital of Moldavia, Fondane wrote Preface in Prose while hiding in Paris as the introduction to the Exodus (Exode) sequence, which was published as part of his final collection, Le Mal des fantômes (The Malady of Ghosts).

One commentator described Fondane’s prose as being “laced with a furious metaphysical affirmation of existence despite his harrowing circumstances.” He was “a poet who lived the 20th-century catastrophe with a fierce intensity and answered it with an uncompromising cry of metaphysical revolt — right up to the threshold of the gas chamber.” Fondane’s tour de force, which he wrote in 1942, is “a work of poetic defiance, a confessional manifesto written in the face of capture and extermination.” The poet himself described it not as a work of art but as a “scream” (cri) that cannot fit into the constraints of a perfect poem.

Fondane was arrested in the spring of 1944 by local collaborators and held in the Drancy internment camp before being put on a transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland. He was sent to the gas chamber a few months before the Russian army liberated the camp presumably because the guards considered him unfit for work at the age of 45. According to some accounts, while Fondane had theoretical legal grounds for avoiding deportation because he had a Christian wife, Geneviève Tissie, he chose to sacrifice himself to be with his sister Lina who was  also taken into custody for the Nazi crime of being Jewish.

I read Preface in Prose with great sadness and a profound sense of longing for what should have been in 1944 and what should be in 2026. It was as if he was speaking to me, a kindred spirit, and everyone else in the world. Fondane wrote as a Jew during the ascendancy of Nazi Germany, a time when the concentration and death camps were running at full tilt, yet he speaks to all of us now and in the future with clarity, poignancy, and urgency.

As Preface in Prose eloquently reveals, line by line, verse by verse, Fondane was acutely and painly aware of what was happening to fellow Jews and other enemies of the Nazi regime and essentially foretold his own death. (Follow this link to read the original French version.)

It is to you I speak, antipodal men,
I speak man to man,
with the little in me of man that remains,
with the scrap of voice left in my throat,
my blood lies upon the roads, let it not, let it
not cry out for vengeance!
The death-note is sounded, the beasts hunted down,
let me speak to you with these very words
that have been our share-
few intelligible ones remain.

A day will come, surely, of thirst appeased,
we will be beyond memory, death
will have finished the works of hate,
I will be a clump of nettles beneath your feet,
-ah, then, know that I had a face
like you. A mouth that prayed, like you.
When a bit of dust, or a dream,
entered my eye, this eye shed its drop of salt. And when
a cruel thorn raked my skin
the blood flowed red as your own!
Yes, exactly like you I was cruel, I
yearned for tenderness, for power,
for gold, for pleasure and pain.
Like you I was mean and anguished,
solid in peacetime, drunk in victory,
and staggering, haggard, in the hour of failure.

Yes, I was a man like other men,
nourished on bread, on dreams, on despair. Oh, yes,
I loved, I wept, I hated, I suffered,
I bought flowers and did not always
pay my rent. Sundays I went to the country
to cast for unreal fish under the eye of God,
I bathed in the river
that sang among the rushes and I ate fried potatoes
in the evening. And afterwards, I came back for bedtime
tired, my heart weary and full of loneliness,
full of pity for myself,
full of pity for man,
searching, searching vainly upon a woman’s belly
for that impossible peace we lost
some time ago, in a great orchard where,
flowering, at the center,
is the tree of life.

Like you I read all the papers, all the bestsellers,
and I have understood nothing of the world
and I have understood nothing of man,
though it often happened that I affirmed
the contrary.
And when death, when death came, maybe
I pretended to know what it was, but now truly
I can tell you at this hour,
it has fully entered my astonished eyes,
astonished to understand so little-
have you understood more than I?

And yet, no!
I was not a man like you.
You were not born on the roads,
no one threw your little ones like blind kittens
into the sewer,
you did not wander from city to city
hunted by the police,
you did not know the disasters of daybreak,
the cattle cars
and the bitter sob of abasement,
accused of a wrong you did not do,
of a murder still without a cadaver,
changing your name and your face,
so as not to bear a jeered-at name,
a face that has served for all the world
as a spittoon.

A day will come, no doubt, when this poem
will find itself before your eyes. It asks
nothing! Forget it, forget it! It is nothing
but a scream, that cannot fit in a perfect
poem. Have I even time to finish it?
But when you trample on this bunch of nettles
that had been me, in another century,
in a history that you will have canceled,
remember only that I was innocent
and that, like all of you, mortals of this day,
I had, I too had a face marked
by rage, by pity and joy,

an ordinary human face!

While emphasizing our commonalities as human beings, Fondane also sternly reminds us that he was different from me and many of you and in blood solidarity with others then and now who “know the disasters of daybreak” and “the bitter sob of abasement.” It’s as if this stateless Romanian-French Jew was speaking to Palestinians in Gaza and other victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

I was not a man like you.
You were not born on the roads,
no one threw your little ones like blind kittens
into the sewer,
you did not wander from city to city
hunted by the police,
you did not know the disasters of daybreak,
the cattle cars
and the bitter sob of abasement,
accused of a wrong you did not do,
of a murder still without a cadaver,
changing your name and your face,
so as not to bear a jeered-at name,
a face that has served for all the world
as a spittoon.

Ironically, in light of the Israeli-engineered genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza that continues unabated during the latest “ceasefire” – death by IOF soldier, missile, bomb, quadcopter, hunger, torture, disease, lack of access to medicine and health care, etc., ad nauseam – the final verse that begins with “Remember only that I was innocent…” is inscribed at the entrance of Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names in Jerusalem, a clarion call to recognize the humanity of all victims in Benjamin Fondane’s “ordinary human face.” (Yad Vashem is Hebrew for “a memorial and a name.”) Most Israelis, the Zionist regime, and millions of Zionists around the world, including evangelical Christians, make notable exceptions regarding the Israeli-induced plight of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and elsewhere.

In a recent essay entitled When Europe’s Abused Became Abusers in Palestine Robert Rosenthal, who writes in Substack under the moniker The Progressive Jew, explained that when he was little most Jews interpreted “Never Again” to mean another Holocaust for Jews. “But as time went on, a lot of us expanded the meaning of ‘Never Again’ to include all of humanity. Zionists seem to remain narrowly and even obsessively focused on Jews only. Not only that, but many also apparently believe that if endless Israeli oppression is necessary to maximize Jewish safety, it’s acceptable. In addition to being spectacularly selfish, racist, and immoral, it’s irrational.”

Another obvious reason for this obsession among Jewish and Christian Zionists – notably, the latter far outnumber the former – are the religious justifications for the “Greater Israel” project (Eretz Yisrael Hashlema) grounded in biblical narratives related to a divine covenant promising land between the Nile and Euphrates to Abraham’s descendants. (This includes the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, and all or part of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.)

In Benjamin Fondane’s prescient words from the grave I hear the voices and see the “ordinary human faces” of Palestinians in Gaza, both the living and the dead, our fellow human beings and victims of the apartheid, settler colonial, and genocidal state of Israel.

These include five-year-old Hind Rajab, who was murdered two years ago, along with her aunt, uncle, four cousins, and two paramedics who tried to rescue her when she was the sole survivor, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician, lead physician at MedGlobal, and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, who is still languishing in prison, and Anas Al-Sharif, a Palestinian journalist and videographer for Al Jazeera with whom I had a brief chat hours before the IOF killed him and other journalists with a targeted missile strike. I also hear the voices and see the faces of others around the world who are the victims of state terrorism, including in my home country, now and throughout history.

Postscript: As a musician and composer in a previous life, I was inspired to create several versions of a song based on Preface in Prose entitled A Face Like Yours with AI assistance and human input. Here is my favorite version, followed by the lyrics.

A Face Like Yours

Verse 1
I speak to you from what is left of me,
From a broken voice, from the dust I breathe.
My blood is dry on the stones of the road,
Let it not cry out, let it not be owed.
The hunt is done, the night has rung its bell,
Few words remain, but I’ll try to tell.

Pre-Chorus
When the thirst is gone, when hate is through,
When memory fades like morning dew—

Chorus
Remember this when I am gone,
When I am nettles you walk upon:
I had a face like yours, it’s true,
A mouth that prayed, an eye that knew
Salt from tears and red from pain,
A human heart, the same refrain.
Before I’m ash, before I’m air,
Know this once: I was there.

Verse 2
Like you, I wanted tenderness,
Power and gold, the ache, the mess.
I loved, I hated, I bought flowers cheap,
Missed my rent, lost my sleep.
On Sundays I chased unreal fish,
Bathed in a river, made small wishes,
Ate fried potatoes, came home alone,
Heavy with pity, heavy as stone.

Pre-Chorus 2
I searched for peace where it never stays,
In the dark between desire and faith.

Chorus
Remember this when I am gone,
When I am nettles you walk upon:
I had a face like yours, it’s true,
Hands that reached, a heart that broke too.
I was cruel, I was kind,
Strong in peace, drunk in triumph, blind in decline.
Before the silence, before the air,
Know this once: I was there.

Bridge
I read the papers, the words, the lies,
Claimed understanding, but saw with closed eyes.
And when death came, I thought I knew its name,
But it filled my sight with unanswered flame.
Tell me—tell me true, my friend—
Have you understood more in the end?’

Verse 3
No—here we part, for this is the truth:
You were not born hunted, starved of proof.
No one threw your children away,
No cattle cars at the break of day.
You kept your name, you kept your face,
Mine was a curse the world erased.

Chorus
Still remember this when I am gone,
When history’s clean and I’m trampled on:
I was innocent—this I swear,
And like you all, I had my share
Of rage and joy and fragile grace,
An ordinary human face.

Outro
This song asks nothing—let it fall,
It’s just a scream, not perfect at all.
But if it finds you, someday, somewhere,
Pause your step, and remember:
I was a man.
I was alive.
I had a face—
Like yours.

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