The Jewish Conscript
There are nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the Czar’s army alone. –Newspaper clipping.
They have dressed me up in a soldier’s dress,
With a rifle in my hand,
And have sent me bravely forth to shoot
My own in a foreign land.
Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes,
And many in conquest wild;
But I shall die for the fatherland
That murdered my little child.
How many hundreds of years ago–
The nations wax and cease!–
Did the God of our fathers doom us to bear
The flaming message of peace!
We are the mock and the sport of time!
Yet why should I complain!–
For a Jew that they hung on the bloody cross,
He also died in vain.
–Florence Kiper Frank
About Victoria Janssen
Victoria Janssen [she, her] currently writes cozy space opera for
Kalikoi. The novella series A Place of Refuge begins with
Finding Refuge:
Telepathic warrior Talia Avi, genius engineer Miki Boudreaux, and augmented soldier Faigin Balfour fought the fascist Federated Colonies for ten years, following the charismatic dissenter Jon Churchill. Then Jon disappeared, Talia was thought dead, and Miki and Faigin struggled to take Jon’s place and stay alive. When the FC is unexpectedly upended, Talia is reunited with her friends and they are given sanctuary on the enigmatic planet Refuge. The trio of former guerillas strive to recover from lifetimes of trauma, build new lives on a planet with endless horizons, and forge tender new connections with each other.
