RE: Auschwitz, Seventy Years Later: A Short Story, and Context
I wandered Auschwitz in a daze
Mind flayed by the cattle stalls
Muscles tight, tears held in stasis,
dead chambers now collapsed.
Cold, stacked shelves line walls
where women were left to die.
I ate a Twix surreptitiously,
while the starving eyes of dead
watched sun-baked tourists pass.
Ovens should only bake bread.
I've been unable to write about my experience at Auschwitz & Birkenau... until now. I honestly found the whole thing too much at the time and ended up retreating inside my mind - there wasn't much going on up there intellectually - as a defense mechanism. That verse above is the start (and first draft) of a poem I'm going to write about that place. When I think about it my last post on steem was a little bit influenced by the trip to Auschwitz, but in the strangest possible way.
Your 50 word story is fantastic @jayna. It is tragic, with an impact that really hits home. You manage to subtly show one of the many sick and twisted processes the Nazis had in there genocide. It's details like the prosthetics that slap you in the face when you visit Auschwitz. The many pointless exiengencies they had for killing. The inhuman bureaucracy.
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Great poem, @raj808. I can only imagine what it must be like to visit a place where so much cruelty was committed.
It is sad that despite all the effort that has been done to not let time make people forget about this atrocity, similar crimes have been committed since and everything suggests that more are still to happen.
Different actors, same play.
I remember this poem by Carl Samburg
Hopefully, we won't get to that point of forgetfulness.
Yes, all true, @hlezama. Thank you for those poetry references!
Thank you so much for sharing that, @raj808. I was pretty certain I wasn’t the only one struggling with how to talk about this piece of our incredible experiences at SteemFest. Or how to deal with it at all, emotionally. Your poem is stunning. Please keep on it.
As writers, we do have an outlet for creating context around and expressing the most difficult ideas. It’s not easy, though, is it? Particularly with things our minds can’t even fully grasp, or that are profoundly devastating. How does one talk about massive human suffering and death and do it it justice? We can only try.
I will find your other post. It’s good to be back home and catching up.