(We visited Auschwitz in October last year.  Our tour guide had a personal connection with the camp as her uncles who had been in the resistance were tortured and killed there. As she pointed out the killing grounds - the gas chambers, the gallows, the firing squad yard the starvation cells, the torture yards, she would repeat the phrase "All roads lead to death".

A triolet. My poem for International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday).

 

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

All roads lead to death

We come from Prague or Chiechanow

To Auschwitz and to Birkenau

But no God ever hears us now

For they are blind and deaf

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

All roads lead to death.

 

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

Under Rudolf Hoess

Our Gods spectated and allowed

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

These crimes obscene near old Krakow

And favoured the SS

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

All roads lead to death.

 

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

By bullet and by gas

Or by starvation this was how

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

The whole wide world would disavow

We silent unterclass

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

All roads lead to death

 

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

Eclipsed the Jewish race

They slaughtered us like pigs, like cows

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

The “showers” are kept busy now

The ovens can't keep pace

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

All roads lead to death.

 

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

All roads lead to death;

Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau,

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

Jehovah will not help you now

So taste your last sweet breath

In Auschwitz and in Birkenau

All roads lead to death.