the feldwebel became a general
the campdoctor, a professor
and we the jews - it’s banal
we stayed jewish - no error

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wandering jew, damned jew
no words about them are forbidden
suspected of crimes and treason
they have been put in jail
 
they have been tortured and murdered
in the name of an insane idea
and now - more than ever -
who is next, please ?

https://www.boekgrrls.nl/BgDiversen/Onderwerpen/gedichten_over_schilderijen.htm#Jan%20Theuninck
 

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No, Board of Deputies of British Jews,

you do not speak for her;

neither does the tool-maker’s son,

he does not speak for her;

nor you, Hotovely, you don’t speak for her…

…for that brave Jewish lady with a conscience

whose family died in The Holocaust,

who, in London, engaged in peaceful protest,

was harassed, arrested and detained

for twenty-four hours by a bored-...

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Here I am,

The last man survived

Nobody left to console

None to share the pain

The only fool to withstand

The holocaust

It is raining since

The last bullet fired

Perhaps to wash out

Human sins

Till a single drop of

Dead blood remains

Feeling ashamed

Of all the memories

Feeling guilty

Of human legacy

Feeling relieved

From war a...

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Who, if anyone, will survive

to read our words?

Will they be found in an archive...

reductio in absurdum,

read in a nuclear winter-proofed bunker

by the very one who

mocked, maligned

and slandered

the prophet

who said

that

they

would

not

press

the

button,

on the grounds that the deterrent was not a deterrent?

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smiles so rare for her

not a welcoming face

fear in pale grey eyes

of warmth not a trace

appearances can fool

no semblance of fire

that beneath the skin

makes the mask a liar

stumbled into tinder

my chimney smoking

horned into bonfires

deception is stoking

inner magma outed

slow magnetic glow

mechanic love only

imagination can sow

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Pretty much the only poem I have that is appropriate for Holocaust Memorial Day.

(Artwork: "Rabbi Loew and the Golem", from "The Prague Golem: Jewish Stories from the Ghetto", ed. Harald Salfellner, Vitalis, 2016. The artist is uncredited)

Golem

(Prague, 1939)

For centuries I’ve lain here undisturbed,
this synagogue’s hushed attic my bedchamber,
the life-spark in me stilled...

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 For those who are alive

To see the British newsreel

And remember the spring of 1945.

The British army entered Bergen-Belsen,

The heart of Germany -

The town of beauty and harmony.

Neat gardens, rich farms, …

All around seemed to have only charms.

English soldiers began to admire the place,

In any case, up to the moment

When they felt the smell.

It looked lik...

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Listen not unto the lie that stings the lips.
Witness not the act that stays a pitied mind.
Speak not of the hatred that will crack the whips.
Let not those insidious be here enshrined.

Trample not upon the freedoms of your kin.
Take not which was never here for you to own.
Read not of the bitterness that splits the skin.
Write not of the malice that shatters the bone.

Reason with the ...

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Forever let this place here be
A warning to humanity,
A cry of despair, suffering;
Death in total, unrelenting.
Forever let its soil be bare,
For life shall grow not anywhere,
This place, a scar upon the face
Of mans wickedness, mans disgrace.

Forever let this place here stand
As evidence of evil planned,
A barren wasteland, void of hope,
Where many left in clouds of sm...

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The Fury
Pitiful the morsels for the feeding of the rats,
Dished out unemotionally by vicious little cats,
Like vermin, out the rats they come and scurry back to hide,
Whilst all the while the fat cats feast voraciously outside.

The Persecuted
In the darkest corners of the high walled city streets,
The rank and rotten souls of human waste claw to compete,
Shuffling through th...

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