THE JEWISH CONSCRIPT
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 their fields and 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.
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 their fields and 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.