To all the men, women, and children who suffered in the Nazi concentration camps.
“God didn’t do this. I believe that God gave man heart, mind, and free will to do what he pleases. I don’t blame this on God, I blame it on man.” - Auschwitz/Dachau survivor.
I stand in the middle and weep.
The towering trees sway softly in the whispering breeze.
They seem to hold the ghost of the hands
That lovingly smoothed over their seeds;
Filthy, broken hands.
They lived this.
For this I hurt.
Fourteen hour work.
Starvation.
Sickness.
Torture.
Burning.
Darkness.
Fear.
Slavery.
Hatred.
Lies.
Death...
Life.
Reaching. Reaching out for...
Something...
Nothing. Gone.
Faded away like the morning mists
Over the hills she can barely remember
As a whiplash strikes her back.
She swallowed the diamonds her mother gave her.
He hung by his arms from a wooden pole.
When she walked through that gate, she stopped speaking to God.
He fell to his knees on the stones.
She stood in a black dungeon for five days
And drank the water that she used as a latrine.
As a mother breathed her last, she soothed her dying child.
He closed his dead friend into the incinerator.
If he refused, he would be shot.
Thousands lived that agony
So that today, we could live free.
Flowers grow,
Rain falls,
Wind blows,
Trees sway,
Hearts move,
Hatred dies,
Tears dry,
Memories burn.
We must never forget.
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