‘Why the black answer of hate to your
existence, Israel?’ - Nelly Sachs

Nelly Sachs was born in Berlin in 1891,fled
Germany to escape the Holocaust in 1940,
became a Swedish citizen in 1952, and won
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966. If I
Only Knew (Arc, £8) is a slim volume of her
most poignant poems, beautifully translated
by Jean Boase-Beier, which provides a timely
reminder not just of the enormous suffering of
the Jews in Europe, and why the state of Israel
was created after the Second World War, in
1948, but an implied plea for peace and
reconciliation, and a two state solution, to a
75-year-old problem, with a Palestinian nation,
too, in the Southern Levant today.