On the Term Emigrant (1937) — Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht in exile Translated from German into Albanian by Eda Zari

On the Term “Emigrant”

I always thought the name they gave us was wrong: Emigrants. That means people who leave their country. But we did not leave, freely choosing another land. Nor did we move into a country to remain there, perhaps forever. We fled. We are the driven-out, the banished.

And the land that took us in was no home; it was to be exile.

So we sat there restlessly, as close to the borders as possible, waiting for the day of return, watching every smallest change beyond the frontier, questioning every new arrival eagerly, forgetting nothing, surrendering nothing, and forgiving nothing that had happened, forgiving nothing.

Ah, the silence of guilt does not deceive us. We hear the cries from their camps all the way here. And we ourselves are almost like rumours of crimes that escaped across the borders.

Each one of us who walks through the crowd in torn shoes bears witness to the shame that now stains our country.

But none of us will remain here. The last word has not yet been spoken.

Eda Zari writes: it reads like a picture of our own present. History repeats itself.

Image reference: Antonie Volkmar, Farewell of the Emigrants, Berlin, 1860. © DHM Berlin. Brecht drawing: Fred Dolbin / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. © 2020 Eda Zari.