Arbeit Macht Frei
(Scholastic Regional Honorable Mention 2014, First Place NC Council on the Holocaust Contest 2014)
Here lies a history book, and the chapter
Dark as a candle burned far past
The wick--
But the horror is still illuminated;
The pages need no flame.
Brightly they shine
Like glowing, angular stars on an
Armband;
Ashes they rain like
Cut-off curls in the
Middle of the street.
You opened the gate and
There they were, barracks and dry bread and
All. And skin and bones, bones
And skin. Their gold teeth covered the floor.
And still thinking they were important,
Part of some carefully assembled workforce,
But each actually only a red dress in a
Pile of gray.
Wardens separated the sick from the healthy to
“Make room.” But they were the
Sick ones, the workers
Healthy and sound, but working to
Die instead.
The power ate at the souls,
The calm, blue heart turned red.
But power lies not in murder,
Rather in restraint.
The jewels wrapped in bread were
Swallowed, never to return,
For one gets what one takes.
A generation of lost brothers and
Sisters—commemorated in museums and
Monuments and movies and
Some say it’s morbid, some
Disrespectful. Others repulsive.
But memories they are--
Dark and vile,
But such a keepsake necessary
As to not garner another.
Immune we become
To what we see on a screen,
But real is real and
So is history;
Immune we cannot be.
His struggles and her struggles
And theirs become ours
And we, too, cloud the chimneys
If we watch others enter the
Gas chambers.
Every war is our war; a victory
Not on the cards without us.
Rage and hate thrive and die,
And today no different--
Not a sixteen square block grid,
But a thick ash covering the world;
Hatred not concentrated but spread.
The blue eyes and the brown and the
Green, all the same;
The dresses all red.
Relevance we ignore;
Repetition we laugh away.
“Only a fool would watch that
Today.”
But fools we have and fools
Aplenty.
We watch and we watch and we watch--
Tiny golden teeth extracted,
A silver ring here and there;
What’s the use in saving a simple
Lock of hair?
So we watch and we keep watching,
The gold and the soap and the hate
Forming their own train--
The tracks to a new genocide and
How little we care.
For it’s neither he nor she nor I--
Our fillings are ceramic.
How little we care,
How much we must, for
Any man’s death diminishes me.
It’s said that whoever saves
One life saves the
World entire--
Ask not for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Dark as a candle burned far past
The wick--
But the horror is still illuminated;
The pages need no flame.
Brightly they shine
Like glowing, angular stars on an
Armband;
Ashes they rain like
Cut-off curls in the
Middle of the street.
You opened the gate and
There they were, barracks and dry bread and
All. And skin and bones, bones
And skin. Their gold teeth covered the floor.
And still thinking they were important,
Part of some carefully assembled workforce,
But each actually only a red dress in a
Pile of gray.
Wardens separated the sick from the healthy to
“Make room.” But they were the
Sick ones, the workers
Healthy and sound, but working to
Die instead.
The power ate at the souls,
The calm, blue heart turned red.
But power lies not in murder,
Rather in restraint.
The jewels wrapped in bread were
Swallowed, never to return,
For one gets what one takes.
A generation of lost brothers and
Sisters—commemorated in museums and
Monuments and movies and
Some say it’s morbid, some
Disrespectful. Others repulsive.
But memories they are--
Dark and vile,
But such a keepsake necessary
As to not garner another.
Immune we become
To what we see on a screen,
But real is real and
So is history;
Immune we cannot be.
His struggles and her struggles
And theirs become ours
And we, too, cloud the chimneys
If we watch others enter the
Gas chambers.
Every war is our war; a victory
Not on the cards without us.
Rage and hate thrive and die,
And today no different--
Not a sixteen square block grid,
But a thick ash covering the world;
Hatred not concentrated but spread.
The blue eyes and the brown and the
Green, all the same;
The dresses all red.
Relevance we ignore;
Repetition we laugh away.
“Only a fool would watch that
Today.”
But fools we have and fools
Aplenty.
We watch and we watch and we watch--
Tiny golden teeth extracted,
A silver ring here and there;
What’s the use in saving a simple
Lock of hair?
So we watch and we keep watching,
The gold and the soap and the hate
Forming their own train--
The tracks to a new genocide and
How little we care.
For it’s neither he nor she nor I--
Our fillings are ceramic.
How little we care,
How much we must, for
Any man’s death diminishes me.
It’s said that whoever saves
One life saves the
World entire--
Ask not for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.