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 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.