We Saw Too Much To Ever Forget
by Laura Nelson
a woman's braid
in a pile of human hair
We saw
pictures of children the Nazis had taken
from their parents
We saw baby clothes
We walked without feeling
Instinctively, we cried
But we felt nothing. Only numb
Our minds could not believe
the gas chambers or crematoriums, we couldn't
understand
As we sat in the memorial
room, a song lamenting
the death of six million
Jews filled the room
A man sang
Of Treblinka, Auschwitz, Birkenau
Candles lit the darkened room
Pictures of Jewish victims lined
the walls
I wanted to run, I had seen
too much, I never realized
what human beings could do
At Birkenau, Marion
led us through
what used to be
his room,
showed us the boards they used for beds,
troughs they used for sinks,
and holes they used for toilets
Marion told us his story
As we left Birkenau,
I saw a stork,
settle on a barrack's roof.
It made me furious.
Marion smiled, "It reminds us
of the future,
of hope."
and is funded through a St. Cloud State University
(St. Cloud, Minnesota) Cultural Diversity Committee allocation.
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Last update: 9 May 2000
URL: http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/kaleidoscope/volume3/toomuch.html