Related quotes: For Anne Frank (1929-1945) ....

Meeting in Belsen

For Anne Frank (1929-1945) .

One day in the autumn of 1944,
Along with your sister Margot,
You were deported from Auschwitz
to Bergen-Belsen.

When you arrived in the camp
the barracks were full,
so for several weeks
you lived in a crowded tent.

Unlike in Auschwitz,
there were no gas chambers in Belsen,
just shouting SS guards with dogs,
watch towers and barbed wire fence,
starvation and disease,
living skeletons of prisoners
tottering around like ghosts.

Typhus raged everywhere
And each hour brought new miseries.
You stared at the clouds in the sky
with your big eyes that grew bigger
in the camp on your sunken face.

Your head was shaven now
and you dressed in coarse rags.
But in your tiny fragile figure
the pure fire of your lofty soul
kept burning.

Then winter came with ice and snow,
frosty winds swept through the camp.
The barracks were unheated in Belsen.
The cold followed you everywhere
And the hunger pangs became unbearable.

You wished at least you could write
but it was hard to get paper or pencil.

Nevertheless, February arrived
with thrilling news.
Amid tears and smiles you found out
with boundless excitement
that an old school friend from Amsterdam
was also in Bergen-Belsen,
in another section of the camp.

Although you could have been shot for it,
you decided to take the risk and meet
with your friend.

So one shivery winter night
you walked on the frozen ground
of the barren heath of the camp
towards the barbed wire fence.

Scared and trembling in the dark,
She waited on the other side.
It was dangerous to make any sound.
However, suddenly and against all odds
she heard your voice whispering her name.

You could not embrace each other
because of the barbed wire barrier.
But you could talk and cry together
And the tears were flowing like rivers.

She brought you a crust of bread
and threw it over the barbed wire fence.
But a woman took it from you
And you fumed in dismayed frustration.

Yet two nights later
you met again your friend at the fence.
She tossed another package of food
And this time you caught it.

Hundreds of miles away in Poland
your mother was alone in Auschwitz.
She missed her family and refused to eat.
While freedom drew closer inch by inch
and the Russians approached the camp
she died of starvation
on January 6,1945.

Meanwhile in Bergen-Belsen
Margot became gravely ill.
She contracted typhus
and one day as she lost consciousness
she fell from her bunk and died.

At the same time you lay sick, too,
in your barrack bunk,
unaware of your sister’s death
or the fate of your parents.

The sun rose and set on the horizon
and the Allies advanced in every front.

On January 27,1945,
Three weeks after your mother died,
the 322nd Rifle Division of the Red Army
liberated your father in Auschwitz.

In March, American and British forces
crossed the Rhine River in Germany
and a month later, on April 15,1945,
the British 11th Armoured Division
overran Bergen-Belsen
and liberated the concentration camp.

But they came too late for you
Because your heart stopped beating by then.

I don’t know if irony
Can offer any pale solace
Yet compassionate arms
Held you when you
Became highly delirious.

Carrying the promise of spring
A bright breeze blew through the lager.
It was March 1945 now
and slipping slowly into a deep coma
you died peacefully
in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

You were fifteen years old.

However, only the flesh dies.
The soul survives.
Your memory lives forever.

Anne, you always believed
in the goodness of man.
Your constructive sensibility
transcends time and suffering.

Your towering courage soars
above war and destruction.
It rises in gleaming nobility
as a symbol of the human spirit
triumphing against evil.

Your immortal Diary inspires
millions of people around the globe.
Its poignant words glow and shine
illuminating the darkness of the night
with radiant splendour of light.

Anne, when I was born
You were already six years old.

In the summer of 1944,
while you and your family
were hiding in Amsterdam,
My mother, sister and I were deported
From Hungary to Strasshof,
a slave labour camp near Vienna.

My father was sent to Auschwitz.

Then on April 9,1945,
A fortnight before my ninth birthday,
the Red Army
Liberated us in Strasshof.

Now the winter of life
Turns my thinning hair grey
And with the rolling of seasons
I became much older than you.

I age.
You don’t.

(Montreal,2009)

poem by Paul Hartal
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Related quotes

Arbeit Macht Frei

Which means work sets you free.
That bears at the entrance of Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp.
How does it fades the holocaust in the poor human memory?
The memorial day is commemorated internationally January 27, the anniversary of the date of the Liberation, the death camp in 1945.
Nowadays in the whole World Men were out of work
And I think of the infamous phrase 'Work sets you free.'

*My regards to the couplet Alison & Jerry.

poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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Fate Hanged on a Hairbreadth

It was summer,1944.
The train stood at the railway station of Gyŏr,
halfway on the road
between Budapest and Vienna.

In the boxcars
there were over 3,000 passengers.
The Hungarian gendarmes squeezed
the deported men, women and children
like sardines into the wagons
and the prisoners were crying for help.

For the SS-Unterscharführer
assigned to the transport
it was just another job.
The corporal already directed
many similar trains to the east.
And those trains always went to the east
and to the same terminus.

However, this transport of deportees
was unlike the others.
The SS corporal made a fatal mistake
but the guards discovered this
only at the Slovakian border.
The train's number was not
on the list of transports
destined for Auschwitz.

The train stopped
at the Slovakian border.
Here the guards contacted
Colonel Adolf Eichmann by telephone
and informed him about the error.

Eichmann decided
that since the train traveled that far
it should continue to Auschwitz.
So the SS guards changed the serial number
of the train and replaced it with the number
of another train departing from Debrecen.

Thus, instead of the death camp
of Auschwitz-Birkenau
in Nazi occupied Poland,
the train from Debrecen
was sent to the distribution camp
of Strasshof in Austria.

As you see,
fate hanged in the war on a hairbreadth.
A freak of chance, a random accident,
an oversight of procedure,
or of a supposed algorithm,
could lead to arbitrary decisions
regarding the life or death of thousands.

Although Strasshof
was a brutal slave labor lager,
most people there,
about 14,000 of the 21,000 deportees,
survived the ordeal of the Holocaust.

poem by Paul Hartal
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The Messiah in Strasshof

Inside the grinding burden of the crusty past
dreary facts hide, jubilant verities hibernate,
haunting memories trumpet and overwhelm the poet
he is compelled to tell what cannot be told.

But this is a true story and it must be told.
It happened long ago, as the ordeals of 1944
curled into the agonies of 1945
over the tormented body of war-weary Europe.

Exhaling anguished stench soaked in torrents of blood
mighty armies clashed in apocalyptic combats,
against the forces of darkness.

In the unrelenting wintry cold
the fighting intensified along frontless fronts.
There were daily air raids and dog fights in the skies.

Humming allied bombers flew towards their targets
and the German flak firing from the ground
pelted across the blue firmament feathery clouds
of bursting explosive shells.

Turning his back to the barbed wire fence
a slim and hungry eight year old boy
lifted his ebon eyes to the heavens,
beclouded with melancholic despair and oblivion.

A prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp Strasshof,
a forlorn suburb of waltz-loving Vienna,
he stood dazed, almost catatonic.

And then suddenly as if appearing out of nowhere
a teenager started to talk to the boy.

And he listened eagerly,
drinking the words with zest and fervor,
his eyes widely open
and glow in wonder and fascination.

For, the boy heard from his mysterious friend
that one day swords will be beaten into plowshares
and no nation will rise against others to wage wars.

Oh, then the days of halcyon will arrive,
wild lions will play peacefully with timid children
amid blossoming flowers on quiet river banks.

The day will come and people will be free and happy
because the Messiah is round the corner,
bringing redemption to the hungry,
the wretched and the hopeless.

poem by Paul Hartal
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The Dancer of Melody Palace

How is your beer?

Good. Bavaria brews the best beers in the world.

That is true. So what did you do in the war?

I was in the Russian front, wounded three times. How about you?

I was an SS guard in Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Was not that boring?

It was routine work. But unusual things had happened.

Don’t tell me that you ran out of Cyclon B for the gas chambers.

No. But on October 23,1943, we had some trouble
with a transport of 1,700 Jews who arrived from Bergen Belsen.

What sort of trouble?

Well, as usual, before gassing them we told them to undress.
In this group was a young and beautiful dancer, Franceska Mann.
She worked at the famous Melody Palace nightclub in Warsaw.

This sounds to me more like a musical than real trouble.

Just wait. Ogling Franceska, Sergeant-Major Schillinger
ordered her to undress completely. Yet she stood there hesitating.
Since others were slow as well we began to deliver blows
to the women to speed up the process. Then suddenly this Jewess,
the dancer, threw her shoe or something into Schillinger’s face.

What? Are you serious?

Yes, I am.

And he did not shoot her on spot?

Well, the sergeant-major tried. Astonished and furious
he opened his gun holster but Franceska was faster. She seized
his pistol and shot him twice in the stomach, wounding him mortally.

It is hard to believe this.

Yes, indeed. And she also managed to fire a third shot
injuring SS Sergeant Emmerich. In the ensuing commotion
the desperate women attacked the guards,
severing the nose of an SS soldier and scalping another.

How could you let this happen?

We were taken by complete surprise. This thing never happened before.
I am embarrassed to tell you this but we fled from these women.

So what is the end of the story?

We returned of course soon with machine guns and grenades,
led by camp commandant Rudolf Hoess.
We took the women outside and shot them one by one.
This ended the revolt of the Jewish women in Birkenau.

What about Schillinger? Did he survive?

No. he died of his wounds. Some say he was groaning
and asking God why he has to suffer like this.

poem by Paul Hartal
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A Prisoner of Sobibor

On an early autumn day
a train coming from Minsk rolled
into the railway station of Sobibor,
a village in the Lublin district of Poland.

The passengers of the train
were unaware that the outskirts
of this dusty small town
concealed a dreadful Nazi death camp
where gas chambers poisoned victims
with carbon monoxide.

It was September 23,1943,
and a Soviet prisoner of war,
First Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky
was also in one of the boxcars
of the deported Jews.

His mind in captivity
wandered restlessly.
He thought about his family.
And he thought about the war
and about Mother Russia
and of daring plans of escape.

In the Great Patriotic War
Sasha fought bravely
against the German invaders
in the Smolensk Oblast,
defending the road to Moscow.
as the Red Army was retreating.

A Wehrmacht unit captured him
in the fall of 1941 in Vyazma.
Sasha found it ironic that here
in 1812 the Russians defeated
a French army of Napoleon
retreating from Moscow.

Before his arrival in Sobibor,
Sasha had already spent long months
in various prisoner camps.
Then, during a strip search,
the Nazis discovered
that he was circumcised
and as a Jew they deported him
to Sobibor.

The transport that took him to the camp
was an unusual one, because the Nazis
selected 80 men for work,
instead of gassing them.
Sasha was chosen along with 79 others
to build new storage facilities in the lager.

Now, exhausted and hungry,
he was chopping wood
with other prisoners.
They hoisted their heavy axes
and then let them fall
on the tree stumps.

SS Oberscharführer Karl Frenzel,
a squad leader, guarded the group.
He routinely punished prisoners
for slowing down
with twenty-five lashes each.

Once, when Sergeant Frenzel
was busy in beating a prisoner,
he noticed that Sasha
took a moment of rest.

'Russian soldier, you don't like the way
I punish this fool? ' Frenzel asked.
'Well, I give you exactly five minutes
to split this stump. If you make it,
you get a pack of cigarettes.
But if you miss even by one second,
you get twenty-five lashes, too.'

It looked an impossible assignment
but Sasha was still young and strong.
He started to assault the stump
with all his strength,
fuelled with the hatred of the enemy.

He finished the task in less
than the allotted time of five minutes.

Impressed by the performance,
Frenzel handed Sasha
a pack of cigarettes.

Many prisoners
valued the luxury of smoking
even more than their scarce food rations.
But Sasha refused to take
the highly prized commodity.

'Thanks, but I don't smoke', he said.
Then he lifted his axe
and went back to work.

The SS guard was puzzled and furious.
He turned around and left.

However, he returned soon
with a piece of bread
and some margarine.

It was a very alluring delicacy
for a starving man
and Frenzel handed the food to Sasha.

But, again,
Sasha declined the SS man's offer.
'Thank you', he said, "the food
we are getting here satisfies me fully.'

This was obviously a lie
and Oberscharführer Frenzel
became even more furious.
Yet at the same time
he admired the strength,
the pride and moral backbone
of the prisoner.

The SS man was at a loss how to react.
But he did not whip Sasha.
He just turned on his heels and left.

A few weeks later a revolt broke out
in the Sobibor death camp.
Sasha played a central role
in organizing the uprising.

In the afternoon of October 14,1943,
the prisoners killed
most of the German SS men
and some of the Ukrainian guards
in the camp.

Three hundred prisoners,
from a crowd of nearly six hundred,
managed to break through
the barbed wire fences and mine fields
under a hail of fire of the guards.

This daring uprising
was the most successful mass escape
of prisoners from a Nazi lager
in World War II.
But only about 50 of the escapees
survived the war.

Sasha was one of them.
He found his way to the partisan forces
fighting in the forests against the Fascists
and later joined again the Soviet Red Army.

Seventeen years after the war,
In 1962, Karl Frenzel was arrested
in Germany for his participation
in the mass extermination
of 250,000 Jews at Sobibor.

Witnesses testified that Frenzel
was a sadist murderer.
He brutally had beaten to death
scores of prisoners, whereas others
he shot through the head.

A survivor of the death camp,
Esther Terner-Raab
saw the SS sergeant grabbing a baby
and slamming the infant's head
against the side of a boxcar.

The Hagen Trials in Germany
continued for four years.
In the end,
the court found Karl Frenzel guilty.
It sentenced him to life imprisonment
for war crimes
and crimes against humanity.

poem by Paul Hartal
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Acting school was summer camp, and I needed concentration camp. I had so many different ideas swirling between culture and how to tie things together.

quote by Ajay Naidu
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Flowers of Horror

People who love flowers
Cannot be bad
Says the proverb.

But take the insight
With a grain of salt
For malignant hands
Can turn flowers
Into graceless means
Of lies and deception.

During World War II
The National Socialists
Perfected the dark art
Of deceit by exploiting
The beauty of nature
To disguise and shroud
Their fiendish goals
Of ruin and destruction.

The skies darkened then
Even in the sunshine
Violets trembled
And forget-me-nots
Whispered worries
Wobbling in the wind.

Sixty km north of Prague
A barbed wire fence
Above the camp gate
Of Terezin, the sign said:
Arbeit macht frei.

Here the Nazis set up
The model ghetto
Theresienstadt where
Work made the inmates
Free and they could plant
Colourful flowers.

Buds of starvation
Blossoms of death.

Do not worry
The daffodils said.
This is a friendly place
The hyacinths sighed.
Do not revolt
The roses rustled.

Yet the daisies shuddered
And forget-me-nots
Whispered worries
Wobbling in the wind.

On the roads of Galicia
Between Lublin and Lvov
In east Poland behind
The barbed wire fences
Of Belzec geranium pots
Lined the path
To the gas chambers.

Buds of starvation
Blossoms of death.

The skies darkened then
Even in the sunshine
Violets trembled
And forget-me-nots
Whispered worries
Wobbling in the wind.

poem by Paul Hartal
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Yes, I remember the barbed wire and the guard towers and the machine guns, but they became part of my normal landscape. What would be abnormal in normal times became my normality in camp.

quote by George Takei
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Walking Through Barbed Wire

Wish I could see you for one last time
Wish I could say goodbye to you
It's hard to deal with you dying
It's time to say goodbye to you

Bloody-faced
Kissing death
Walking through barbed wire
I'll let you go
Let me go digging thru myself

I would die for you
I'd walk right thru barbed wire

Good luck in your next life
Walk as tall as the trees
Be gentle as spring winds
And have the warmth of summer sun

I would die die for you
I'd walk right through barbed wire
I blame myself for your death
It's tearing me apart

I would die die for you
Yes I would
Let you go
Let me go digging through myself

Bloody-faced
Kissing death
Walking through barbed wire

song performed by by Papa Roach from Lovehatetragedy
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I didn't equate a POW camp with a concentration camp.

quote by Larry Hovis
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Simple Simon

Simon found love, in love he thinks he found himself
Only has a heart for her and her alone
He walks down crowded streets and doesn't feel alone
Oh, never alone
Walks in space with his feet firmly on the ground
Camp on love sign people I talk about
Johnny knows love song people I talk about
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon, oh oh oh
Camp on love sign people I talk about
Johnny knows love song people I talk about
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon, oh oh oh
Well she's just a simple girl, yeah
Spends her time on crossword games and cigarettes, ah
She lives all alone in a military zone where sam's can't get in
Facts and evidence, she probably give you no clues away
No clues away
Camp on love sign people I talk about
Johnny knows love song people I talk about
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon, oh oh oh
Camp on love sign people I talk about
Johnny knows love song people I talk about
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon, oh oh oh
oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh
oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh
oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Camp on love sign people I talk about
Johnny knows love song people I talk about
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon, oh oh oh
Camp on love sign people I talk about
Johnny knows love song people I talk about
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon found love, in love he thinks he found himself
Only has a heart for her and her alone
He walks down crowded streets and doesn't feel alone, oh never alone
Walks in space with his feet firmly on the ground
Camp on love sign people I talk about
Johnny knows love song people I talk about
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon, oh oh oh
Camp on love sign people I talk about
Johnny knows love song people I talk about
Simon, oh oh oh
Simon, oh oh oh
Submitted by Michael Hack

song performed by by INXS
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Let me tell about Wouter

Let me tell about Wouter
standing against all wars
and who didn’t want to go
to a military camp.

He then got
three years jail sentence
and with a criminal record
he went
to the detention barracks
where the colonel said:

“Wouter you are a naughty boy
and I will get you right quickly,
if you want to stay alive in this camp.”

First he had to scrub lavatories
in pace
with the marching stick
hitting holes out of his hands
and suddenly stand straight to attention
when his task was completed.

He was grabbed and forced naked
into a cold shower
where they wanted to scrub him clean
of his faith
with scrubbing wire and a mop
and he didn’t
wrestle or kick
and didn’t stop believing
in his faith.

On command he was taken
to a instructor
that had to teach him
things about a gun.

“I know that you have no faith, ”
he said to him
because he believed differently
and when he didn’t want
to touch the gun
the corporal opened
his own pants
and pulled his own dingeling out
and pressed both in his face.

At a time he came under the boot
and still it didn’t strip him
of what he believed
and after three years of hell
he was free
in his country
where people really believed in God.

Still I wonder in my soul
and when I faced the enemy
with guns and tanks
who was the most brave
between him and me
and still I cannot get
Wouter out of my thoughts

and I wonder what God
thinks in his heaven
about a army
that gives pain
to people that are different
and when I get on my knees
I pray for both Wouter and me

[Reference: i sing of Olaf glad and big by e.e. Cummings.]

poem by Gert Strydom
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Auschwitz

Once I overheard a middle-aged Jewish woman
talking to her Rabbi
telling him of how she and a friend
travelled to Auschwitz
and finding so much sadness there
decided to do something happy
as if to spite the sadness.
So they danced on the railway line
leading to that camp of death-
two middle-aged women holding each other.

This to me say so much about the human spirit.
If I could I would paint a picture.
Will someone paint it for me please?

poem by Gillian Commerford
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Fond And Happy Memories

In the middle of February they always came to Annagloor
And parked their horse drawn vans by the by road the travelling Irish poor
They came for the March horse fair in Millstreet Town horses they bought and sold
And a beautiful Pinto to them was a horse worth more than gold.

The coldest part of the Winter is in mid February
And a cold wind blew across the sky in temperatures low as minus 3
Their horses they did not tether on the by road they ranged free
And though that was close to fity years ago those memories remain with me.

And though many Seasons have come and gone since then the memories remain evergreen
Around their camp fire they drunk their illicit booze the stuff known as poteen
And the accordionist played the old tunes and with him they sang along
And they were bound through their cultural links to music dance and song.

Their ancestors were the dispossessed that Cromwells's army had put on the road
That led them to the wandering life of the 'no fixed abode'
Their mothers gave them life in their horse drawn vans and in their horse drawn vans they died
And from birth till death they roamed around the Irish countryside

Outcasts in their own country and homeless and downtrod
But through their music dance and song linked to a greater God
And though they too had their human frailties so too don't we one and all
And fond and happy memories of them I can recall.

Their children and grand children don't live in a horse drawn van
For the late fifties brought great changes to the lives of the wandering clan
Yet by the by road at Annagloor around their camp fire in the moonlight
I still can hear them singing on a cold and frosty night.

poem by Francis Duggan
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Beleaguered City, The

I have read, in some old, marvellous tale,
Some legend strange and vague,
That a midnight host of spectres pale
Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream,
With the wan moon overhead,
There stood, as in an awful dream,
The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
The spectral camp was seen,
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
The river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there,
No drum, nor sentry's pace;
The mist-like banners clasped the air,
As clouds with clouds embrace.

But when the old cathedral bell
Proclaimed the morning prayer,
The white pavilions rose and fell
On the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far
The troubled army fled;
Up rose the glorious morning star,
The ghastly host was dead.

I have read, in the marvellous heart of man,
That strange and mystic scroll,
That an army of phantoms vast and wan
Beleaguer the human soul.

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream,
In Fancy's misty light,
Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam
Portentous through the night.

Upon its midnight battle-ground
The spectral camp is seen,
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
Flows the River of Life between.

No other voice nor sound is there,
In the army of the grave;
No other challenge breaks the air,
But the rushing of Life's wave.

And when the solemn and deep churchbell
Entreats the soul to pray,
The midnight phantoms feel the spell,
The shadows sweep away.

Down the broad Vale of Tears afar
The spectral camp is fled;
Faith shineth as a morning star,
Our ghastly fears are dead.

poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Voices Of The Night : The Beleaguered City