Tied to the Place and Time

Roll-call wake-up with the breath of rotting feet;

another day, another open wound that won’t heal.

‘Dressed!’

‘Make beds!’

‘Collar down!’

‘Fall in!’

‘Keep time!’

‘Eyes right!’

Orders barked at a brutal rhythm

that ruled the tired marches.

The under nourished fed hard labour;

arbeit macht frei for the demoralized.

Eyes on the ground staring at silence from within

too empty to contemplate suffering.

The present was all that remained,

lost in a forgotten fog

that longed to worship the dawn of springs new sun.

The dead eyes fixed outside on reality

from behind the gun turrets and razor wire.

 

Waiting in line,

naked,

branded like cattle,

herded together to face the slaughterman.

Terror became routine

waiting for God to say

if they could endure more

or exit through the chimneys.

The young said the old would be selected.

The healthy said the sick.

Selected through weakness,

selected by chance,

the condemned were led away dirty and unshaven.

Their ashes scattered over the frozen ground

trodden by the death camp purifiers.

Death ruled unopposed.

So blasphemous of the beaten disciple

to yield to the temptation of prayer

when so many prayers went unanswered.

 

In the cold depths of a desperate subconscious

lurks a murderer, a moral disease.

We can all play the victim

or the guilt of mans slaughter.

Given the choice in a choiceless scenario,

driven by necessity,

the victim became the butcher

lured by the fake seduction of ascendancy.

 

‘She crawls out from a pocket of sequestered air

beneath a pile of Human remains;

faces fixed in hideous contortions.

This is unique, nobody in here comes out alive.

They hide her, out of sight of the gas chamber;

just for a moment morality flashes before them

reminding them she is one of them,

an inmate,

a dead body,

a statistic.

She is just sixteen and frail,

and has no understanding of the Hell that surrounds her,

but death will visit her soon enough.’

 

Fear.

Hunger.

Cold.

Fatigue.

Pain.

Disease.

The words read like commandments

delivered by the deity of desolation.

Be innocent,

be a barbarian,

be an optimist,

just be.

Too busy breathing to think about dying.

 

As their saviours advanced into the camp

The harsh winter had chased away the last remnants of hope.

Shrink-wrapped bodies were breathing their last.

Only the mass graves lay witness to the brutal truth;

A truth buried by the guilty survivors,

Buried amid the Nuremberg gallows

And the years that brought detachment.

Emotions followed tears in fleeing a broken man,

A moral suicide of a man dressed as an animal.

This wasn’t even a pyrrhic victory.