sadie_beth Offline

Holocaust Horror

In case you haven't noticed or bothered to look at the right hand side of my profile, I am Jewish. Though I am not religious, I am strongly connected to my Jewish background.

Recently, I was accepted on this program called the March of the Living, where Jewish teenagers from across Canada travel to Poland to witness the horrors and remains of the various concentration and death camps established in the second world war. I wrote a poem in preparation for the journey, and was thrilled to have one of my best friends read it in a ceremony at one of the most horrendous concentration camps; Majdanek (pronunciation: my-don-ik). It was a huge honour to know that my thoughts about the Holocaust had been recognized in a talent that I discovered for myself.

Before I write out the actual poem, I'd just like to point out that there are some people in this world who deny the Holocaust ever happened, let alone even know what it was. I frown upon such people. With all of this evidence, how can someone say this atrocity never happened? The fact of the matter is, it did. And we are losing the lives of the few survivors we have left. That's why the Holocaust needs to be known, and that's why it is our job as Jewish citizens to spread this knowledge, to keep history from repeating itself, and to let our Jewish culture live on for future generations.



A time of disappointment
A time of great despair
A time of death and horror
Their ashes fill the air

A blackened sky of souls
The innocent shall pay
6,000,000 Jews were murdered
We remember to this day

It started with a boxcar
Like cattle we were shipped
Hypnotized by Hitler's reign
Our dignity was stripped

Families were torn apart
Valuables were stolen
Nazi soldiers took what was
A bright and thriving Poland

How long until this madness ends
I weigh but 60 lbs
A Nazi armed at each square inch
I jump at every sound

Surrounded in the barracks
By the beaten and the dead
I worry should that be my fate
The dawn is what I dread

If some of us were lucky
Our suffer would not last
For those of us who were
Like vermin they were gassed

Tremendous torture we've endured
Like no one's ever seen
Not one can understand until
They've been where we have been