An ominous storm in despondent Oswiecim,
Snow descended over Auschwitz when I visited,
Solemnly conceding to the air of malevolence,
The Holocaust, of Jews, Moslems and more.
Some kidnapped and thrown into cattle wagons,
Others tricked by a promise of milk and honey,
They scrubbed real good and donned smart wear,
Then packed their last most valuable treasures,
Only to find themselves in front of THE gate!
Over the entrance, a curled metal sign,
Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free), my foot!
Imagine the astonishment on their faces,
Odd smell hung heavy over, delivering suspicion,
The sight of broken barracks sending doubts,
The electric fence confirming their worst fears,
And the armed SS squadron giving it all away,
Too late to turn back, if that was ever an option,
Unimaginable stories lie in this dark place!
Stripped naked of human dignity before this portal,
Walking into a rat-infested promised land – Kanada!
As slave labour, cargo for the Auschwitz warehouses,
Stuck in long queues, like obedient ants, for daily roll calls,
To be exterminated and decapitated in the ‘hospitals’,
Fed with poison, injected directly to the heart,
And choked with cyclone in the gas chambers!
So, business was booming and they had to expand,
By building the much larger Birkenau camp, and,
Monowitz, conveniently located by the chemical works,
Yet more hundreds of concentration camps in the region,
Extending their network to the rest of Europe.
These pictures would appear normal elsewhere,
But alas, here you inevitably read between the lines,
You feel the pain when you touch the teary eyes,
Imagine the stories behind the tattooed scars,
The beguilingly innocence of a disciplined child,
And distressed, yet defiant eyes of a spirited parent,
Torrent Death Squad wrath seen in the shadows,
And the invisible scorn of the Birkenau ghosts,
You hear the screams and then deadly silence,
The crackling of bodies in the crematoria ovens,
And the belching sound of the stark chimneys,
You smell the stench of the flying human ashes.
Our escort has worked here nigh onto 40 years,
Been through it all; the bad, the dirty and the ugly,
The first twenty, emotional with returning victims,
The last half, a museum operating like normal, but now,
Ukrainian War wounds her brains with sad memories,
Of a world ignoring the grey smoke from the crematoria,
Indifferent, going about their daily lives with apathy,
As if this was the white smoke from the Vatican City,
Complacency; stupid henchmen cheering mad leaders,
It needs to change, now, or humanity shall perish,
Judgement Day, the end of the rail is near!