THE DAY DAD WENT TO BELSEN

 

The tank stopped abruptly

And we sat open mouthed

At what we beheld

Our brains could not assimilate

What our eyes were seeing

Great mounds of …. What?

It can’t be that.

All the horrors of war

We had witnessed, experienced

Since D-day

Did not prepare us

For what Belsen held in store

A place devoid of God

A place where even birdsong was banished

We dismounted and approached on foot

As each step brought us closer

Our worst fears were realised

We saw that the mounds were indeed bodies

Or something likened to bodies

Then I saw an androgynous figure

Stood at the fence

A dirty little bag of bones

Wrapped in dirty rags

Bony fingers clutching the wire

Like a birds feet gripping a trig

I reasoned it was a girl

As the rags might well have been a dress

“We are English” I said

“Don’t be afraid”

Her fleshless face was beyond gaunt,

Her shaved head little more than a skull

Her huge eyes were so black and deep

I could see into her soul

A weak smile played round her mouth

And tears welled up in her huge eyes

I would not have believed it possible

For her desiccated form

To have held enough moisture for tears

But they were there

And they ran down the grubby cheeks

Of the little bag of bones

And dripped onto her ragged dress

We ran to the gates

And forced them open

Then we stepped into the jaws of hell

More skeletal figure appeared

From amidst the piles of rotting corpses

Bemused and disbelieving

They hugged us, and thanked us

Some cried, some laughed

We gave them water

And fed them our rations

Not realising we were finishing

What the Germans had started

The food was too rich

For their weak emaciated bodies

What we didn’t realise

Was we were killing them with kindness

The girls name was Elise

She was the same age as me

But she died the next day

Her face with the huge tear filled eyes

Haunted my dreams

All of the days of my life

Penetrating my soul

And breaking my heart

My only consolation

Was that she at least knew kindness

Once more before she died

THE ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST’S

 

The mountainous lands of Armenia

Populated since prehistoric times

Was the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden

And the Armenian highlands surround Mount Ararat

Upon which Noah’s ark came to rest

They were appropriately the first nation in the world

To adopt Christianity in AD 301

As its official state religion

The Christian Armenians lived

Under the ottoman empire’ oppressive yoke

For almost four centuries

When In august 1896

A small band of Armenian freedom fighters

Seeking international recognition of there plight

Raided the headquarters of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul

They murdered the guards

And took more than 140 staff hostage

However their plan backfired

When it brought down upon their heads

The wrath of their Turkish masters

And provoked the first Armenian holocaust

When Mobs of Muslim Turks

Massacred more than 50,000 Armenians

This was however spectacularly surpassed

Almost 20 years later

When in the spring of 1915

A concerted effort by the Kaisers allies in Istanbul

To systematically set about the removal

Of their Armenian problem

And the Muslim overloads ordered

The Butchery of one and a half million

Armenian Christian souls

And providing the Germans with a template for the future

AUSCHWITZ

 

Auschwitz in essence

Was a processing plant

Or perhaps more accurately

A recycling plant,

Recycling an abundant commodity,

i.e., lower forms of life,

Into a revenue stream

By stripping the resaleable parts

Clothing, jewellery, hair, teeth

And burning what was left.

A cold and calculated business

Inhumanity on an industrial scale.

So, the next time

You cast yesterdays must have device

Into your recycling bin

Just remember the Germans did that with people

THE DAY DAD WENT TO BELSEN

 

The tank stopped abruptly

And we sat open mouthed

At what we beheld

Our brains could not assimilate

What our eyes were seeing

Great mounds of …. What?

It can’t be that.

All the horrors of war

We had witnessed, experienced

Since D-day

Did not prepare us

For what Belsen held in store

A place devoid of God

A place where even birdsong was banished

We dismounted and approached on foot

As each step brought us closer

Our worst fears were realised

We saw that the mounds were indeed bodies

Or something likened to bodies

Then I saw an androgynous figure

Stood at the fence

A dirty little bag of bones

Wrapped in dirty rags

Bony fingers clutching the wire

Like a birds feet gripping a twig

I reasoned it was a girl

As the rags might well have been a dress

“We are English” I said

“Don’t be afraid”

Her fleshless face was beyond gaunt,

Her shaved head little more than a skull

Her huge eyes were so black and deep

I could see into her soul

A weak smile played round her mouth

And tears welled up in her huge eyes

I would not have believed it possible

For her desiccated form

To have held enough moisture for tears

But they were there

And they ran down the grubby cheeks

Of the little bag of bones

And dripped onto her ragged dress

We ran to the gates

And forced them open

Then we stepped into the jaws of hell

More skeletal figures appeared

From amidst the piles of rotting corpses

Bemused and disbelieving

They hugged us, and thanked us

Some cried, some laughed

We gave them water

And fed them our rations

Not realising we were finishing

What the Germans had started

The food was too rich

For their weak emaciated bodies

What we didn’t realise

Was we were killing them with kindness

The girls name was Elise

She was the same age as me

But she died the next day

Her face with the huge tear filled eyes

Haunted my dreams

All of the days of my life

Penetrating my soul

And breaking my heart

My only consolation

Was that she at least knew kindness

Once more before she died

HOLOCAUST

 

Since the cooling of the Nazi’s oven fires

And the fading glow of the funeral pyres

The world has had to endure the mutterings

Of those who deny the holocausts sufferings

The inane ramblings of conspiracy theorists

The bigoted bile of Islamic fundamentalists

The holocaust now stricken from the syllabus

We must not speak of it lest we cause a fuss

We must appease the liberal sentiments

For God forbid we might cause offence

But the holocaust happened, SHOUT it aloud 

Shout it in the face of the apathetic crowd

For if we do not condemn the holocaust deniers

Somewhere, one day they will relight the fires

HOLOCAUST

 

Since the cooling of the Nazi’s oven fires

And the fading glow of the funeral pyres

The world has had to endure the mutterings

Of those who deny the holocausts sufferings

The inane ramblings of conspiracy theorists

The bigoted bile of Islamic fundamentalists

The holocaust now stricken from the syllabus

We must not speak of it lest we cause a fuss

We must appease the liberal sentiments

For God forbid we might cause offence

But the holocaust happened, SHOUT it aloud 

Shout it in the face of the apathetic crowd

For if we do not condemn the holocaust deniers

Somewhere, one day they will relight the fires

THE DAY DAD WENT TO BELSEN

 

The tank stopped abruptly

And we sat open mouthed

At what we beheld

Our brains could not assimilate

What our eyes were seeing

Great mounds of …. What?

It can’t be that.

All the horrors of war

We had witnessed, experienced

Since D-day

Did not prepare us

For what Belsen held in store

A place devoid of God

A place where even birdsong was banished

We dismounted and approached on foot

As each step brought us closer

Our worst fears were realized

We saw that the mounds were indeed bodies

Or something likened to bodies

Then I saw an androgynous figure

Stood at the fence

A dirty little bag of bones

Wrapped in dirty rags

Bony fingers clutching the wire

Like a bird’s feet gripping a twig

I reasoned it was a girl

As the rags might well have been a dress

“We are English” I said

“Don’t be afraid”

Her fleshless face was beyond gaunt,

Her shaved head little more than a skull

Her huge eyes were so black and deep

I could see into her soul

A weak smile played round her mouth

And tears welled up in her huge eyes

I would not have believed it possible

For her desiccated form

To have held enough moisture for tears

But they were there

And they ran down the grubby cheeks

Of the little bag of bones

And dripped onto her ragged dress

We ran to the gates

And forced them open

Then we stepped into the jaws of hell

More skeletal figure appeared

From amidst the piles of rotting corpses

Bemused and disbelieving

They hugged us, and thanked us

Some cried, some laughed

We gave them water

And fed them our rations

Not realizing we were finishing

What the Germans had started

The food was too rich

For their weak emaciated bodies

What we didn’t realize

Was we were killing them with kindness

The girls name was Elise

She was the same age as me

But she died the next day

Her face with the huge tear-filled eyes

Haunted my dreams

All of the days of my life

Penetrating my soul

And breaking my heart

My only consolation

Was that she at least knew kindness

Once more before she died