History Lesson
At the opening of the first oven door,In this small crematorium,
She has to go outside
Recover herself, fight back the tears.
As if the enormity of the crime,
The wickedness, the evil
Still lives here, and the smell lingers on.
This place, this charnel house,
That saw the baking of bodies,
In those early days before the numbers grew.
She comes back again, joins the rest of the tour,
To witness bloody Birkenau,
An industrial scale of murder:
Special branch-line into the camp,
Guard-house, towers, miles of wire,
Block-houses, machine guns and dogs,
Death selection process, over in seconds,
Shambling over to the showers,
Undressing, stripping, leaving everything
For collection later.
Herded together, door slamming shut,
The screams, the panic, the fear,
A roof-top trap-door opening,
And a casual drop of the Zyklon,
Waiting for silence, removing the bodies,
To the fire-pits.
She thinks she will faint,
As she stands inside the blackened walls.
Is this where it happened?
Was this where history was made,
In pursuit of a eugenic final solution,
To wipe undesirables from the face of the earth?
To Canada then, to witness the evidence,
The residues of countless victims,
Suitcases of personal papers,
Glass cases of shoes, of clothing, of toys,
Of teeth, of hair and of bones,
Every re-useable, recoverable substance.
Exhibitions, reconstructions, documents,
Photographs, testimonies, memories.
Over-whelming denial for the deniers.
A woman bearing flowers falters at these sights,
Breaks down, and is comforted by others.
Yet these school-children rush past,
Shouting at each other, and into their phones,
Crisp packets rustling, coke cans drained,
Laughing and joking, cat-calling,
Youth oblivious to euthanasia,
Ignorant of this inhumanity,
And to whom the holocaust means nothing.
Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2012
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