Armenia, Armenia
After the great flood Noah’s ark landed
on Mount Ararat, says the Bible.
Nowadays, the snow-capped summit
of the mountain soars over Yerevan.
Although the dormant volcanic cone
of Ararat lies south of the border,
in Turkish Anatolia,
the view of the mountain dominates
the skyline of the Armenian capital.
Most of the territory
that was once part of historic Armenia
belongs to Turkey today.
Under the yoke of the Muslim Ottomans,
the aspirations of the Christian Armenians
to obtain autonomy clashed
with the dreams of their rulers
to establish a pan-Turkish Empire.
In the 19th century the government
of the crumbling Ottoman Empire
started a campaign to wipe out
the Armenian population.
It perpetrated a genocide,
which reached its peak
during the First World War.
In 1908 an extremist wing
of the Union and Progress Party,
the Young Turks, came to power
in the Ottoman Empire.
They rejected demands for ethnic autonomy
and launched a systematic state organized attack
on the Armenian community.
It began on April 24,1915,
when the Ottoman authorities arrested
some 250 Armenian leaders in Istanbul
and murdered them.
Then armed Turks began uprooting men,
women and children from their homes.
Rape and murder became a commonplace.
Depriving them food and water, Turkish squads
forced Armenian communities to march
through the deserts of Syria where they died
of dehydration, starvation and exhaustion.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses
from all over the world recorded
and documented state-supported massacres.
In 1915, for example, Leslie Davis,
the American consul in Kharput, reported
that 10,000 bodies of murdered Armenians
had been discovered near Lake Göeljuk.
In the same year Giacomo Gorrini,
the Italian consul in Trabzon, testified:
“I saw thousands of innocent women
and children placed on boats,
which were capsized in the Black Sea”.
Armenians call the mass slaughter
of their people Metz Yeghérn, the calamity.
Historians estimate the number of those
who lost their lives
in the great Armenian tragedy at 1.5 million.
The government of Turkey, however,
refuses to admit that a state organized genocide
took place.
In the fall of 2001 Pope John Paul II
paid a visit to the former Soviet Republic
of Armenia. He laid a rose at the eternal flame
in the memorial of Yerevan
and prayed for the victims:
The lament that rises from this place,
The call of the dead from the depth of Metz Yeghérn,
The cry of innocent blood
That pleads like the blood of Abel,
Like Rachel weeping for her children
Because they are no more.
poem by Paul Hartal

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
If Turkey is prepared to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, then its leaders can proceed immediately to direct dialogue with its counterparts in Armenia to define a common vision for the future.
quote by Mark Foley

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
This was a tragic event in human history, but by paying tribute to the Armenian community we ensure the lessons of the Armenian genocide are properly understood and acknowledged.
quote by Jerry Costello

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Moreover, as the leadership of the House confirmed last year, the Administration remains opposed to a congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide due to Turkish objections. This approach sends absolutely the wrong signal to Turkey and to the rest of the world.
quote by Patrick J. Kennedy

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
On the eve of World War I, an estimated two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. Well over a million were deported and hundreds of thousands were simply killed.
quote by Eliot Engel

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Modern Armenia survived only because it was the single province controlled, and protected, by the Russian Empire. The rest of the territory within its historical borders is almost wholly devoid of ethnic Armenians.
quote by John Shimkus

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Time Displaced Empires Conflict Expire
Byzantium Byzantine Empire survives;
to be time displaced Islam at greatest extent?
Arab Empire this region controlled 75%.
Europe dark Middle Ages slowly recovers;
Renaissance rebirth of 12th century leads
after centuries to European new aspirations?
Naval prowess of growing European powers?
Forced flexes muscles Ottoman Empire confronts
halts further rapid Ottoman Empire expansions?
European Catholic maritime states;
a coalition of southern Mediterranean
a Holy League fleet in 1571assembles?
Illustrious members were the Papal States;
Habsburg states of Spain Sicily Naples;
Republic of Venice Republic of Genoa mobilizes;
Grand Duchy of Tuscany the Duchies
of Savoy Parma Urbino pledged prepares;
Knights of Malta all will fight Ottomans?
50,000 infantry 200 galleys 100 other ships;
4,500 cavalry adequate artillery too late...
too late assembled defense Holy League fleet?
Venetian defenders of island Cyprus;
in July 1570 were attacked by Ottomans
invaded by conquering Ottoman forces?
Too late to aid Cyprus prevent island's;
capture by conquest Islamic Ottomans
Holy League waited too long perhaps?
Who failed to assemble which powerful allies?
Holy Roman Empire their truce with Istanbul kept?
France honoured anti-Spanish alliance with Ottomans?
Mighty Portugal could spare no forces;
in ongoing maritime confrontations...
was heavily engaged with rival Ottomans;
in both the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean;
proud Portugal had Reconquista fought...
539 years its Moroccan campaign now fights.
poem by Terence George Craddock

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Little-Known Death Factory
Operation Barbarossa,
The German invasion of the Soviet Union
commenced on June 22,1941.
Behind the rapidly advancing Wehrmacht forces
mobile SS death squads, the Einsatzgruppen,
went into action. They killed Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war and political commissars.
The historian Raul Hilberg estimated
the number of Jewish men, women and children
murdered by the Einsatzgruppen
in the ravines of Babi Yar, in the forests of Riga
and many other places at 1.3 million.
On the outspread yards of a former kolkhoz,
a dusty Soviet collective farm,
the SS task forces set up a secret death factory.
Its horrible assembly lines creaked and cried
in the outskirts of Minsk of Byelorussia,
near the village of Maly Trostenets.
Here the Nazis murdered thousands of Jews,
Soviet prisoners of war, partisans, Gypsies
and other Byelorussian civilians.
And then, on May 19,1942,
the first transport of Jews from Germany,
Austria and Czechoslovakia arrived.
Maly Trostenets became
a Vernichtungslager, an extermination camp.
Men, women and children
Were shot daily in the forests.
Others, thousands of them,
were killed in mobile gas chamber vans,
on the way from Minsk to Maly Trostenets.
Special groups of prisoners threw the corpses
Of the murdered into deep pits of mass graves.
The 'final solution',
the euphemistic code used in Hitler's Reich
for the extermination of the Jews,
was conducted in great secrecy.
The guards were ordered under oath
to shut their mouth.
The perpetrators of the massacres tried
to obliterate the evidence
that the camp ever existed.
As the Red Army advanced
the inmates were forced to exhume the bodies
from the mass graves and to cremate the corpses.
After they completed their terrible task
the guards killed them as well.
Finally, on June 28,1944,
the SS guards blew up the camp.
One of the victims who was shot by the Nazis
at Maly Trostenets was Vincent Hadleuski,
a Catholic priest and Byelorussian patriot.
Another victim who died here was Cora Berliner,
a German Jewess born in 1942 in Hannover,
She was known in her homeland
as a pioneer of social work and as an economist.
The Austrian-born soprano Grete Forst
was murdered in Maly Trostenets, too.
History has recorded the date: June 1,1942.
The psychologist Margarete Hilferding,
her compatriot, also lost her life here,
on September 23 of the same year.
No survivors of the lager are known
to be alive today.
Since the Nazis did not keep camp records
the exact number of people who perished here
in the genocide is unknown.
Estimates range from 200,000
to half million murdered men, women
and children. At least 65,000 of them
were Jews.
poem by Paul Hartal

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Secular God
Secular, pertaining to the present world,
to things not spiritual or ecclesiastical,
earthly life, a particular time, temporal,
lasting, occurring in and accomplished
within a century, such a very short time!
Atatürk. Legendary Atatürk.
Source silhouette sustaining; noble wonder.
Atatürk legitimately stood stallion.
Among histories legendary; as a great leader.
Yet if Atatürk. In reality
was embodied God!
The Turkish Nation
Statue Worships States!
Why did he often drink alone?
Day through narcotic night!
Fallen to such a common fate?
Because a man for all that!
Feats required as resolute
Nation-Maker!
Are in themselves in truth
emphasis enough!
Without serving up sermon
ritualistic Godhead halo!
Upon embellished silver
sanctification sanctimonious plate!
Hail Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
a General a Turkish army officer,
a revolutionary statesman a writer,
founder of modern Republic of Turkey
first president of fledgling eagle country
enduring defeating sea aggressive invasions!
Ottoman Empire assaulted on all frontiers
Atatürk led Turkish national movement
throughout Turkish War of Independence!
Established provisional government in Ankara,
defeated all forces sent by invading Allies!
Atatürk’s successful military campaigns
led to liberation creation of new found country
to proud establishment of modern Turkey!
In memory in a grateful nation
Atatürk’s statutes statutes must stand tall!
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stands
a towering figure of the 20th Century!
“Among the great leaders of history,
few have achieved so much in so short period,
transformed the life of a nation as decisively, ...
given such profound inspiration to the world at large.”
poem by Terence George Craddock

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Armenian Grief
The Armenian grief is a shoreless sea,
An enormous abyss of water;
My soul swims mournfully
On this huge and black expanse.
It prances at times – enraged,
And looks for the shore – blue and serene,
Where sometimes, it wearily dives deeply
Looking for fathomless rest;
But it will never reach the bottom of this sea.
It will never reach the shore.
In the Armenian grief – on the black expanse
My soul lives and mourns…
poem by Hovhannes Toumanian

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

Go ahead, kill without mercy. After all, who remembers today the Armenian Genocide
quote by Adolf Hitler

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Nationalistic Catastrophe Inequitable? No!
In New Zealand – (developing)
potential equals people
proven source sowing
shared future prosperity?
In Turkey rapidly
expanding masses
within relatively
limited land mass.
Is financially
exploited force separatist formalization;
shorn sociologically
suppressed resource regional degeneration?
Environmental economic republic ruination
potentially nationalistic splintered annihilation?
Nationalism to ensure
continued engendered capitalistic sodality;
maintains status-quo elite
puppeting manipulated republic reality?
Atatürk was wise enough to know
that political economic and cultural reforms;
an Age of Enlightenment was required
to transform the Ottoman Empire...
into a modern secular nation-state. Kemalism!
Atatürk’s radical reforms inspirationally
guided a fledgling nation with educational;
and scientific progress fusing enlightenment
positivism rationalism realism pragmatism
and secularism into a constitution sacrosanct.
Without pause without transition, the progressive
unfolding, the implementation of Kemalism; the
active modification of Turkish society; adapting
Western institutions with Turkish traits patterns,
to make them, indelibly a part of Turkish culture!
Generations of cultural and social experience, the
collective vibrant memory, of the Turkish nation!
Atatürk’s blessed social and political vision are
sacrosanct; must remain irreversible; indelibly
etched; into the Republic’s nationalistic freedom!
Kemalism decrees that in the Republic of Turkey;
all laws should be inspired by the actual needs;
of citizens; here on Earth; as a basis of national life!
Of all Atatürk’s wise sayings I still love best;
his concept ‘Peace at Home Peace in the World! ’
poem by Terence George Craddock

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
You can talk about Holocaust denial, but it's really marginal for the most part. What is compelling about the Armenian genocide, is how it has been forgotten.
quote by Atom Egoyan

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The legacy of the Armenian Genocide is woven into the fabric of America.
quote by Adam Schiff

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Battle Of Lepanto Ottomans Defeats
Holy League on 7 October 1571 attacks;
wins a crushing victory over Ottoman fleet
at the Battle of Lepanto Ottomans defeats;
off tide turning western Greek coast;
decisively defeated Ottoman mighty main fleet
of Ottoman Empire in fierce five hours;
of fighting on northern edge of Gulf of Patras;
off fate western Greece Ottoman invasion forces
were from naval station Lepanto sailing westwards;
engaged from Messina Holy League fleet;
quick sand history on this victory turns
Mediterranean Sea Holy League prevents;
becoming an open uncontested sea route;
for Muslim forces; from major Ottoman invasion
Italy protects; prevents conquest Ottomans;
advancing further into exposed southern;
flank of Europe victory Lepanto was the last
major naval battle in contest Mediterranean;
fought entirely between diced empire galleys;
great symbolic importance appropriately assigned
to an empires altering decisive naval defeat;
upon signing of peace treaty in 1573 fate turns;
victorious Holy League is incredibly disbanded
axed a short time after unity Pope Pius V died.
Extract from the poem ‘Mediterranean Colonisation Wars Left Legacy Seeds'.
poem by Terence George Craddock

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Balkan Nightmares
The ghosts of history haunt the Balkans.
Ancient passions, unbending hatreds
turmoil the region.
Painful tragedies of the past
are recycled by memories.
Permanent hostage of bound
and determined remembrance,
Race, religion and poverty clash
in violent convulsions.
Ethnic warfare and ruthless fright
sweep across nations,
fuelled by explosions of grief, revenge
and fear.
They are immersed in horror,
terror, chaos and bloodshed,
the sufferings of children,
the sorrows of fathers,
and the agonies of widows.
In 1453 the Turks led by Mehmet II
captured Constantinople
and the Eastern Roman Empire
ceased to exist.
The Ottomans became the new masters
of the Balkan provinces,
ushering in long centuries
of rugged struggles for freedom
and independence.
In 1697 Prince Eugene of Savoy
conquered Sarajevo,
A historic city that he left burned down
and plague-infected. Although by 1717
the prince liberated Belgrade
and the Danube region from Ottoman rule,
he failed to retake the Bosnian capital.
In the 19th century Austria-Hungary
annexed Bosnia, but together with Albania,
it remains a Muslim stronghold
in the heart of Europe.
In one summer day in 1914
the driver of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
took a wrong turn to Franz Josef Street,
at the edge of the Latin Bridge in Sarajevo.
On an official visit, the heir presumptive
to the Austro-Hungarian throne was riding
in an open car along with his pregnant wife,
Sophie.
A young Serb, Gavrilo Princip, a member
of the secret Pan-Slavic Black Hand Society,
spotted them. He approached the car
and from a distance of five feet
he fired twice
his FN model pistol, shooting the Archduke
in the neck and Sophie in the abdomen.
Bleeding, but still conscious,
he pleaded her:
"Please, don't die. You must live
for the sake of our children".
But they both died
on the way to the hospital.
The assassination of the royal couple
was a main catalyst that precipitated
the outbreak of the First World War.
On July 28,1914, Austria-Hungary
declared war on Serbia.
Yugoslavia, the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes,
came to existence in the Great War.
However, peace did not last long.
When Yugoslavia refused to join
Hitler's New Order in Europe,
the Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade
and Nazi Germany invaded the country.
The Fuehrer's armies occupied Sarajevo
on April 16,1941.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
as well as Croatia
became Nazi satellite states.
Fascist Bosnian Muslims,
Croatian Ustasha,
Serb Chetniks clashed with each other
or fought against
Tito's anti-fascist partisans.
The fighting was bloody and brutal.
The occupying German forces
Committed dreadful atrocities.
The Croatian Ustasha
had been especially notorious
for wanton acts of cruelty,
torturing and murdering
thousands of Serbs and Jews,
men, women and children.
During World War II
over one million Yugoslavs died.
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
was born out of the flames and ruins
of the Second World War.
Yet, after Tito's death
and the collapse of communism in the 1980s
the ethnic communities of the republic
wanted independence.
The Serb Communist Party leader
Slobodan Milosevic became a nationalist
and changed the Serbian constitution.
He annulled the autonomy
of the Albanian province of Kosovo
and introduced repressive measures
against ethnic Albanians.
Seeking independence,
Slovenia and Croatia in 1991
voted to secede
from the Yugoslav federation.
A year later Bosnia, too,
declared independence.
In the Yugoslav Dissolution Wars,
Slovenia gained sovereignty,
following brief skirmishes
with the federal Yugoslav People's Army.
In other parts
of the disintegrating communist republic
the tragedy of war struck
with enormous devastation,
enfolding as a long lasting conflict,
a violent catastrophe
that engulfed a large part of the Balkans
in flames.
In November 1991 Serb militias
supported by the Yugoslav Army
murdered hundreds of Croatians
in the Vukovar region.
They continued to bombard the town
for three months solid.
In December,
the Serbian Autonomous Oblast declared
its independence under the name
of the Republic of Serbian Krajina.
It controlled one third of Croatian territory
and pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing,
expelling the Croatian population
from the oblast.
But by 1993
the newly created Croatian Army
was strong enough to start an offensive
against the Serbs. The conflict escalated
into a full scale Yugoslav civil war
and entered its bloodiest phase.
In August 1995 the Croatian Army
invaded Krajina. Within a few days
more than 200,000 Serbs fled their homes.
NATO forces intervened
but supported the Croats.
They patrolled the skies and attacked
Serb surface-to-air missile radar sites.
Croatian planes raided Serbian towns
and army positions.
A dreadful nightmare
descended on the Balkans.
Croatian aircrafts bombed and strafed
Civilians, as frightened Serbs; old and young,
women and children, trying to reach safety,
had been trapped on roads
clogged with refugees.
Adding to the horrors, Bosnian Muslim troops
crossed the border into Krajina and cut off
the Serbian escape routes.
Along with the Croatian assault,
the Bosnian artillery pounded
the fleeing Serbs and burned down
Serbian villages.
Meanwhile the Serbian enclaves in Bosnia
had striven to join a greater Serbia
and engaged in ethnic cleansing.
In July 1995 Serb forces
of General Ratko Mladic
slaughtered thousands of Bosnian Muslims
in Srebrenica.
The wounds of the Second World War
had not healed yet and Yugoslavs
found themselves now fighting a new
and terrible tribal war.
They realized that peace
is precious and fragile,
that it has to be constantly nourished,
that it can never be taken for granted.
They looked back with nostalgia
to past days of tranquility.
Not very long
before the troubles started
Yugoslavia hosted
the Winter Olympic games.
The games were held in 1984
in the city of Sarajevo.
But now, eight years later,
Serbian troops encircled the Bosnian capital.
In a siege that lasted 43 months,
the nationalists cut off food supplies,
utilities and communications.
Serbian snipers shot at Sarajevans
going to work or to shop.
More than 12,000 Bosnian Muslims,
as well as Serb and Croatian residents
of the city were killed in the siege,
among them,1,500 children.
At the same time Serb nationalists
throughout Bosnia shelled and burned down
villages and towns, deported people
to detention camps and terrorized
Bosnian Muslims and Croats.
They systematically raped the women,
tortured and executed the men.
They conducted a scorched earth policy,
destroying houses, schools, roads,
bridges and railways and forced millions
of people to flee their homes.
In 1999, in the same decade
that the Rwandan genocide took place,
President Milosevic of Serbia attempted
another ethnic cleansing campaign
against the Albanian population of Kosovo.
After NATO intervened
and bombed Serbia in order to stop
the expulsion of Albanians from the province,
the returning Albanians attacked
the Serbian residents of Kosovo.
Now the former victims of ethnic cleansing
Became the perpetrators of the same crimes
against humanity. The Albanians drove out
one hundred thousand Serbs from Kosovo.
Human tragedies know neither political,
nor ethnical, nor religious frontiers.
The Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Albanians
involved in the conflicts
of the Yugoslav Dissolution Wars
became both aggressors and victims.
Many of them committed
heinous war crimes.
Civilians, especially the women
and the children, suffered terribly
on all sides.
poem by Paul Hartal

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The British descended
The British descended
on the Transvaal and Orange Free State
from their island
on the other side of the sea
and in thousands
they came to ruin the land.
The British descended
on the Transvaal and Orange Free State
and from the sea they came
and an entire empire
send its soldiers to destroy,
to pillage and scorch the earth,
to rape, and imprison
the women and children
of the Afrikaner nation.
My great grandfathers rode on horseback to war,
with Christiaan De Wet, Cronje
and De La Rey
and they fought hard pressed,
to drive the British
and soldiers from all her colonies away.
My great grandfathers rode on horseback to war
and landed in prisoner of war camps in St. Helena
and although the second Anglo-Boer war was lost
and the Afrikaner nation paid the highest cost
in the destruction of the land,
the death of men
and the murder of innocent women and children,
a time came
that once more we were free.
My great grandfathers rode on horseback to war,
but one was from and with the enemy
and a highlander was he
and a more decent man
is still hard to find
and one that hated the English
for the dreadfull things that they did,
at times I see the restored Martini Henri rifles
taken from the British
during that bitter war
and the legacy and great spirit,
of my great grandfathers
still stays with me.
poem by Gert Strydom

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Kara Mustafa
Retreating from the gates of Wien,
capital of empire holy, Roman,
Kara Mustafa next was seen
in Belgrade. Like a woman
degendered by defeat he raised
no skirt to show his legs but beard,
exposing to the ones who gazed.
his throat. Though other men have feared
their executioners, Mustafa
presented to the silk garotte
his skin just like an orange Jaffa
ready to be peeled. The knot
was tied around his neck, he died,
and dying thus proved heroic
that in his life. Mustafa sighed,
but laughed, because he died a stoic,
to the executioner presenting
with ease, without complaint, a throat
that never wasted time lamenting
his fortune, though scaped like a goat.
Inspired by a review of “The Enemy at the Gate” by Andrew Wheatcroft, reviewed by Eric Ormsby in the NYT Book Review on June 14,2009 (“Empires in Collision: In the 17th century, Habsburgs and Ottomans clashed over the city of Vienna”) :
Wheatcroft, the author of several earlier books on both Habs¬burgs and Ottomans, states that he set out here to portray the Ottoman “face of battle, ” borrowing a phrase from the classic work by John Keegan, and in this he succeeds; his narrative is thrilling as well as thoughtful, a rare combination. Even so, a subtle imbalance prevails. The Ottomans inspired dread in their enemies; fear was part of their arsenal. But, as Wheatcroft repeatedly demonstrates, the Habsburgs were fearsome too, and perhaps even crueler than their opponents, engaging not only in full-scale massacres but in flayings, beheadings and impalements. Perhaps because Wheatcroft hasn’t drawn on Ottoman Turkish sources, his Ottomans, for all his skill at depicting them, appear oddly imperturbable. After Kara Mustafa’s debacle before the walls of Vienna, he retreated to Belgrade; there, on Christmas Day 1683, he greeted the sultan’s executioners, kneeling with “stoic Ottoman calm, ” and even courteously lifting his beard to expose his throat to the silk garrote. The story is legendary, and Wheatcroft recounts it well. Still, here as elsewhere, we’d like to hear the fierce heart beating beneath the legend.
6/17/09
poem by Gershon Hepner

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Nazi Death Squads Enter Eastern Europe
Einsatzgruppen ultimate genocide killing machines
plans so heinous Satan glorified as his SS hells legions;
task forces sowed vile atrocious monstrous Nazi deeds
SS paramilitary death squads systematic mass killings;
originally killing by indifferent civilian herd shootings
typically seek primary target Jews Gypsies Communists;
political categories Polish intellectuals Soviet prisoners
early prey physically mentally handicapped homosexuals;
rabid intolerance eradicated Nazi perceived imperfections
great musical voices minds selected for mass executions;
Einsteins Stephan Hawkings earth rare intolerated genius
unique human diversity frog marched to foul gas chambers;
Einsatzgruppen operated throughout invasion territories
occupied by German armed forces following invasions;
like Poland and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Einsatzgruppen systematically carried out evil operations;
ranging from repellent murder of individuals to operations
which lasted over two or more days vast horrific massacres;
at Babi Yar Kiev Soviet Ukraine 33,771 killed in two days
at Rumbula forest near Riga Latvia 25,000 killed in two days;
who testifies 33,771 Kiev Jews were massacred in two days
at Babi Yar official reports by Einsatzgruppe to headquarters;
infamous September 29-30 1941 SS and German police units
auxiliaries under awful guidance of Einsatzgruppe members;
(mobile killing unit) C slaughtered their naked Jewish victims
as quarry marched into a ravine Einsatzgruppe detachments;
shot all women children elderly without mercy in small groups
in subsequent months following the massacre German authorities;
stationed at Kiev rounded up killed thousands more Jews
at Babi Yar and non-Jews including Roma (Gypsies):
executed too were Soviet prisoners of war Communists
100,000 people estimated murdered at Babi Yar massacres;
Latvia during first six months of Nazi occupation Germans
local collaborators slaughtered 90 percent of the 95,000 Jews;
July 1941 invasion 40,000 Jews live in Riga in fear first days
of occupation savage attacks are launched upon Riga's Jews;
racist pogrom arresting beating torturing raping Riga Jews
Latvian 'civilian' nationalists begin burning synagogues;
with families inside thousands are driven toward beaches
nearby woods shot murdered a surviving 32,000 victims;
are forced into 2 separate overcrowded slave labour ghettos
males 16 to 60 are selected war effort 'productive' workers;
Jewish women children old disabled people will be corpses
German abominable massacres indict humanity forever stains;
Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders
of over one million people in occupied territories;
Einsatzgruppen were the first Nazi organizations
to begin as organized policy mass killing of Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
See also The Holocaust Files!
poem by Terence George Craddock

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
He who cannot pray at home will celebrate mass somewhere else.