Holocaust Remembrance Day ~ 2022

Gestapo

Lovers, there is so much

You can do
By just holding one another
Tenderly this evening—
Like rounded basins
Holding water in fountains
Before the soft curling fall
From one basin to the other.

They are bounding
Up the stairs now,
Clamoring they enter.
Stand facing them.

A nod toward the door.
Grab them, herd them down
To the street,
Hurl them against the wall.
Two shots fired.
Jew, left printed on the wall
Where they fell.

Source

Protestant Theologian ~

After being tortured Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging on 9 April 1945 at a Nazi concentration camp.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko ~

† April 1, 2017

BABI YAR

by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

No monument stands over Babi Yar.

A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.

I am afraid.

Today, I am as old

As the entire Jewish race itself . . .

Holocaust Stones ~ Germany

These are called "Trip-Stones" and are to be found on the sidewalk in front of houses where Jewish families lived who were deported and murdered during the Nazi regime.

 

Wannsee Conference ~ January 20, 1942

As if for a routine business meeting 15 high ranking Nazis met in this house to finalize plans for the "Endlösung", the deportation and extermination of all European Jews, the monstrous crime that anticipated the murder of 11 million human beings.

Night of Broken Glass - November 9, 1938 [Burning of the Synogogues]

I often wonder if I would have had the inner strength and courage, had I been here in Germany then, to stand up against the omnipresent subtle magic and brutal terror of Hitler's seduction. I wonder. . .