The Holocaust 1944
Frozen Jews
By: Abraham Sutzkever
Did you ever see in fields of snow
Frozen Jews, in row upon row?
Breathless they lie, marbled and blue.
Of death in their bodies, no hint and no clue.
Somewhere their spirit is frozen and saved
Like a golden fish in a frozen wave.
Not speaking. Not silent. Just thinking bright.
The sun too lies frozen in snow at night.
On a rosy lip, in the freeze, still glows
A smile — will not move, not budge since it froze.
Near his mother, a baby starving, at rest.
How strange: she cannot give him her breast.
The fist of a naked old man in surprise:
He cannot release his force from the ice.
So far, I have tasted all kinds of death,
None will surprise me, will catch my breath.
But now, overcome in the mid-July heat
By a frost, like madness, right in the street:
They come toward me, blue bones in a row —
Frozen Jews over plains of snow.
My skin is covered with a marble veil.
My words slow down, my light that is frail.
My motions freeze, like the old man's surprise,
Who cannot release his force from the ice.
Moscow, July 10, 1944
First They Came For The Jews - Poem by Martin Niemoller
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Names Upon The Stage - Poem by Sandra Osborne
Silently covered,
Names I never heard
Floors I never stood,
The holocaust to feel them die,
Lonely
When they cry.
Imagine ancient quilts,
And scripts upon a page.
A silver meadows shadow,
The names upon the stage.
Good to see remembered,
Tears and Life, the same.
Just to many truths,
For such an insane game.
Imagine all the people,
And scripts upon a page.
The blank parade of faces,
And names upon the stage.
Holocaust - Poem by Irene C S ClarkHogg
Holocaust.
Iron pipes that pierce the skyline.
Concrete, white against the blue.
Office blocks, now cold and empty,
No sun-streaked glass to mar the view.
Empty eyes that gaze unseeing
On a vista stark and bare.
No dogs to foul the empty pavements.
No birdsong on the morning air.
In an alley filled with rubble,
A rust encrusted laundry van,
Filled with shrouds, no longer needed
By the creatures they called man.
But hope is born, for time must pass.
In reformed tarmac, a blade of grass.
I Cry For Them - Poem by Aldo Kraas
During the holocaust
So many jews
Lost their lives
And I cry for them
Still today
Frozen Jews
Avrom Sutzkever
Have you seen, in fields of snow, frozen Jews, row on row? Blue marble forms lying, not breathing, not dying.
Somewhere a flicker of a frozen soul - glint of fish in an icy swell. All brood. Speech and silence are one. Night snow encases the sun.
A smile glows immobile from a rose lip's chill. Baby and mother, side by side. Odd that her nipple's dried.
Fist, fixed in ice, of a naked old man: the power's undone in his hand. I've sampled death in all guises. Nothing surprises.
Yet a frost in July in this heat - a crazy assault in the street. I and blue carrion, face to face. Frozen Jews in a snowy space.
Marble shrouds my skin. Words ebb. Light grows thin. I'm frozen, I'm rooted in place like the naked old man enfeebled by ice.
Passover Night 1942 - Poem by Yala Korwin
not a crumb of leavened
or unleavened bread
and no manna fell
no water sprang out
of the bunker's wall
the last potato was gone
we sat and we munched
chunks of potato-peels
more bitter than herbs
we didn't dare to sing
and open the door
for Elijah
we huddled and prayed
while pillars of clouds
massed above our heads
and pillars of fire
loomed like blazing traps
Mary's Song - Poem by Sylvia Plath
The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat.
The fat
Sacrifices its opacity. . . .
A window, holy gold.
The fire makes it precious,
The same fire
Melting the tallow heretics,
Ousting the Jews.
Their thick palls float
Over the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out
Germany.
They do not die.
Grey birds obsess my heart,
Mouth-ash, ash of eye.
They settle. On the high
Precipice
That emptied one man into space
The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent.
It is a heart,
This holocaust I walk in,
O golden child the world will kill and eat.
Holocaust - Poem by Alf Hutchison
As seen through the eyes of those who witnessed first hand,
and liberated the scenes of the Holocaust
The rain how it fell; the cadaver smell
My eyes transfixed on that pit of Hell,
Vapid flesh foul, horrendously bland.
But why this carnage, I don’t understand;
Retching, gagging, holding back the bile.
I turn from the evil to rest for a while,
From decomposing mothers, fathers and child;
Satan’s work, merciless, callously wild.
Laid out in graves grotesquely remorse,
Lucifer’s carnage has taken its course
In a dance of death, contorted and thin,
Thousands of bodies, bound together by skin.
Now sixty years passed, will I ever forget.
That day when in person, with Satan I met;
He showed me firsthand his evil, his sin.
Flames of contempt still burn deep within.
Wise men instruct us ‘we must never, forget’,
Upon the memory of them, ‘let the sun never set’;
For six million Jews paid the ultimate cost,
I know, I was there, at the great Holocaust.
