Whispers of Sorrow Unheard

Whispers of Sorrow Unheard

I close my eyes and I see it still.
I am there, breathing the air
filled with my brethren,
burdened and branded by
a six pointed gold star of our faith.
The air is heavy and clouded with their ash,
the land itself coated in their sorrow left unspoken.
But no mournful cries ring out for those gone on.
Instead, there is only the silence broken
by the slow procession of shuffling feet
and the ever constant stench of decaying flesh.
The crack of the whip,
the hollow sound of a gun fired,
and the barking of dogs as cruel as their masters.
So many faces,
a sea of forgotten names,
lost dreams of hope and unfullfilled potential
locked away in an oven
and incinerated as trash.
At times, in those rare moments of clarity,
I listened to the prayers whispered in the dark,
prayers to an unhearing God,
prayers for salvation,
prayers for loved ones,
who I had laid in the fires
and seen cast to the wind,
Prayers always left unanswered.
I die each day anew
along with those cast to the flames.
I die each day again and again
with each soulless corpse
I carry away from the living.
I cannot see beyond the flames,
but I know, with the certainty of my own mortality,
that this is hell.
And with this certainty,
I will never forget.
I close my eyes and I am there.
I open my eyes again, and
the echos of the past haunt me.
No, I will never forget.



Author's Notes: In concentration camps all over eastern Europe there were men selected to carry the corpses of the dead away from the living. They were also forced to place these bodies in the crematoriums, to be burned to ash. This is written from the perspective of one such man.