Holocaust Latvia Begins
Holocaust Latvia begins
on June 22,1941 when
the German army invaded
the Russian Soviet Union;
and the Baltic States
of Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia which had
by Soviet military forces;
recently been occupied
after a proud period
of independence after
World War One finished.
Murders of Jews
Communists began
almost immediately
by Einsatzgruppen;
perpetrated by German
killer squads known
as Special Task Groups
Special Assignment Groups;
the German Security Police
Sicherheitspolizei or Sipo
the Security Service of the SS
the Sicherheitsdienst or SD.
The first recorded murders
were on the day after invasion
on the night of June 23,1941
in town of Grobina near Liepāja;
six Jews were killed
in the church cemetery
by Sonderkommando
1a members deployed;
with the 14th Army
Nazi German
Einsatzkommandos
were a sub-group;
of five Einsatzgruppen
mobile killing squads
up to 3,000 men each
composed of 500 to 1000;
officials of dread SS
Schutzstaffel (SS)
and Gestapo thugs
their vile missions;
the annihilation of Jews
Gypsies Soviet political
Commissars to kill Jews
all Polish intellectuals;
Romani, communists
NKVD collaborators
in captured territories
behind the advancing;
German front lines
Nazi occupiers
were also aided
by a unit of native;
Latvians known
as Arājs Commando
Latvian auxiliary police
Wehrmacht commanders;
bolstered the strength
of the Einsatzgruppen
with regular-army troops
whenever required.
Latvia July 29,1941
forty mental patients
from Lódz in Poland
are taken from hospital;
executed in nearby forest
July 31,1941 Hermann
Göring instructs SS Reich
Security Service chief;
Reinhard Heydrich
to evacuate eliminate
all European Jews
in German-held territory;
Göring's letter mentions
'complete solution'
to European Jewry
Jews purified in death;
July 1941 Germans
establish a Jewish
ghetto at Dvinsk Latvia
July-August 1941;
Jews are murdered
by the tens of thousands
throughout western
Soviet Union Lithuania;
Romania and Latvia
who are the murders?
German Einsatzgruppen
Romanian troops militia;
Ukrainian peasants
Lithuanian civilians
August 1941 German
slaughter of Jews;
at Cesis Latvia
is celebrated
by German troops
security police;
celebrate with
a Totenmahl
'death banquet'
August 1941;
in Belgium
collaborationist
military
organization;
Legion Wallonie
Wallonian Legion
is established
September 29-30 1941;
Babi Yar Kiev
Soviet Ukraine
33,771 Jews
killed in two days;
by SS and German
police units
November 30 and
December 8 1941;
at Rumbula forest
near Riga Latvia
25,000 Jews
killed in two days;
Einsatzgruppen
will murder
over one million
people in occupied;
territories the first
Nazi organized
policy mass killing
of European Jews.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
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poem by Terence George Craddock
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Related quotes
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
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poem by Terence George Craddock
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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
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How Did You Kill Me?
All German concentration camps
will be run under total authority
of dread Death's Head Units of SS;
after 1934 a unified Nazi plan killing
with Prussian military precision
Theodor Eicke will command
SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV):
under SS, Heinrich Himmler
author creator of Dachau in 1933
creator of eastern Europe's death camps
head of most extremely feared unit;
in Nazi Germany the Gestapo in 1934
put in charge of Ministry of Interior
June 1934 Night of the Long Knives
grim SS deed conducted with cold chilling;
efficiency the stamp of events to horrify
appointed commander of unified police
forces in Germany in 1936 unlimited power
Himmler made ‘cattle' trains run on time;
ensured profit camps ran on business lines
concentration camps will be fully integrated
into Waffen-SS by 1944 standard practice
rotate SS members in and out of camps entire;
SS knew shared war crimes against humanity
Himmler chief architect of the Final Solution
uses Einsatzgruppen death squads formed by
Deputy Heydrich in German occupied countries;
to murder mostly Jew civilian non-combatants
Heinrich Himmler demonic vile nasty monster
will assume responsibility for establishing
operating inhuman abhorrent concentration camps;
extermination camps in which millions of inmates
will die in extremely painful systematic mass
gassing ruthless, merciless, heartless, inhumane
treatment scientific ratio overwork malnutrition;
ghastly dissection vivisection medical experiments
Nazi vivisection selected victim human beings
cut up cut apart without any mercy pain killers
no anaesthetics alleviates nerve agony alive cuttings;
surgery conducted for Nazi experimental purposes
on ill fated living breathing man woman or child
medical experiments preformed for years repeatedly
to satisfy ambitions of rhetoric master race demons;
who unleashed unholy inferno upon civilized world
post World War Two judges at the Nuremberg Trials
declared the SS its sub-parts criminal organizations'
responsible for the implementation of racial policies;
of genocide war crimes and crimes against humanity.
No One Saved Our Souls From Demon Spawn Nazis?
Under Nazi Ideology the SS exterminated alleged racially
inferior Jews Poles Romani Slavic Russians chosen SS;
implemented Final Solution killing torturing enslaving
their selected target sub races in crimes against humanity.
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
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poem by Terence George Craddock
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Temporarily in 1934 I became a department head in the German Labor Front and dealt with the improvement of labor conditions in German factories. Then I was in charge of public works on the staff of Hess. I gave up both these activities in 1941.
quote by Albert Speer
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But as my brother was doing his research for a book about my father, it became his opinion that the most influential anti-semitism my father encountered when he was growing up was from Jews, because his relatives were German Jews, and doctors.
quote by Tobias Wolff
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We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.
A Swastika Song (Mixed Feelings)
Would you love a Nazi
If you had to choose
Between a living Fuhrer
And the dying Jews?
I don't love the Nazis,
Goebbels was bad news,
But the murder of the Fatherland
Is giving me the blues.
You may think me crazy
But what have I to lose?
I'm trapped by your hostility
And an angry German muse.
(this poem is about the conflict between guilt and patriotism in the modern German psyche)
poem by John Thorkild Ellison
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The SS: Who Will You Kill?
S.O.S
Save Our Souls
Save Our Souls From The SS
Save Our Souls From Demon Spawn Nazis!
Under Nazi Ideology!
the SS will exterminate the racially inferior
Jews Poles Romani Slavic
the chosen SS will implement the Final Solution
killing torturing enslaving
approximately twelve million people!
the SS will purge threats to race hygiene
the mentally or physically ill homosexuals!
the SS will terminate political dissidents
as enemies of our Supreme Nazi State
marked will be members of labour organizations
any perceived to be criminally affiliated
with religious political and social groups!
any group opposed to the Nazi Regime
any group with views contradictory to goals
of Nazi Government in the Third Reich
the Nazi State and Empire will hunt down
to exterminate clergy of all faiths! (except Islam)
inclusions will include Communists,
Freemasons, Jehovah’s Witness, Rotary Club
members all ear marked for extermination!
Did you make the Nazi hate kill list?
Congratulations your Dead! Dead! Dead!
Copyright © Terence George Craddock
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poem by Terence George Craddock
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I was opposed to World War II, and indeed on June 22, 1941 when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union I suddenly found myself the lone supporter of peace since everybody else had, because of their communist beliefs, shifted over to become supporters of the war.
quote by Douglass North
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The Holocaust never quite leaves Israeli Jews alone. Arabs use it against them and they use it against Arabs. Jews use it against other Jews. Even the president of the United States, it seems, can use it against the prime minister of Israel.
quote by David K. Shipler
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Boy Who Came Down from the Cross
He stood beside his father before tumbling into a deep pit.
A split second later a volley of shots were fired.
His father fell with the others into the abyss, shot dead.
But sixteen year old Zvi Michalowski was alive.
It was a pitch dark night when he climbed out of the pit.
He was naked and his body covered with blood.
He heard the Lithuanian executioners singing, laughing,
Celebrating the shooting of the Jews.
They were all drunk by now.
As Hitler’s armies were advancing on Moscow
The murderers arrived with an Einsatzgruppen unit.
They entered Eishyshok, an old Jewish town in south Lithuania,
On September 25 of 1941. On the same day and the next
The paramilitary SS units massacred about 5,000 Jews
From Eishyshok and adjacent villages.
Zvi Michalowski knew the place like the palm of his hand.
He passed the Jewish cemetery beyond which Polish and
Lithuanian families lived. He knocked on the door of the first house.
A peasant opened the door. In his hand he held a lamp
With a Star of David, which he looted from a Jewish home.
‘Let me in, please’, the boy implored. The man raised the lamp
And looked at the blood covered naked body of the boy.
‘Jew, go back to the grave that you came from! ’ he said
And he shut the door in his face.
Zvi Michalowski knocked on many doors on that night
But nobody wanted to take him in. In his wanderings he arrived
In a wooded area. He knew the old widow who lived in the house
And knocked on the door. She was shocked to see the boy.
She held a burning piece of wood in her hand and spurned him.
He stood there nevertheless. She cursed him, sending him away
With angry words. When he did not move she threatened him
With the fiery wood she had in her hand.
But the boy refused to go away. ‘I am your Lord, Jesus Christ,
Who came down from the cross’, he told her. ‘Now look at me,
Look at the blood of my body, the pain the suffering of the innocent.
Please, let me in’.
Shaking all over, the old woman began to pray.
She fell on her knees at the bloodstained feet of the boy.
Then she slowly rose to her feet, opened the door and let him in.
‘Oh, my dear God, oh my dear God, oh my dear God’,
She kept repeating her prayer, crossing herself each time.
The boy asked the woman not to tell anyone about his visit.
She asked him to bless her family and her, which he promptly did.
She gave him food and clothes and prepared for him a warm bath.
He stayed in her house for three days and three nights.
When Zvi Michalowski left the house he was dressed as a farmer
And carried a food supply for a week. Soon he reached
The nearby forest and went into hiding. He survived the war
Fighting the Nazis as a partisan.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Bible Stories: Esther (Part V, D)
The Jews Defend Themselves:
On thirteenth day of Adar month,
Jews carried out the King’s order;
Their enemies were killed that day;
The people were afraid of them.
The governors, princes and scribes
Feared Mordecai’s rising power;
The King too honored him greatly.
In Susa, five hundred were killed,
Including ten sons of Haman;
All foes of Jews were caught that day;
Such things happened throughout the land;
As per the wish of Queen Esther,
All ten sons of Haman were hung
On poles in Susa openly!
That day, fifteen thousand were killed;
Their properties were seized elsewhere.
Jews celebrated on next day;
The day was declared ‘holiday’;
They exchanged gifts, food and greetings!
Copyright by Dr John Celes 4-18-2007
poem by John Celes
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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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An Oak Wood Piano on Kristallnacht
The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
Into a ditch. Father, he heard the voice of his son, you must
Go on. Zindel took the hand of his son and climbed out of
The trench. With his wife, a son and daughter on his side
They continued the march. But the SS guards did not stop
The savage whipping of the deportees. Blood was flowing
On all sides.
The Grynszpan family were Polish Jews from Hanover.
When the Nazis came to power they became outcasts.
In October 1938 they were expelled from Germany
And deported to Poland in a group of 12,000 Jews.
They were taken by train to the frontier town Neubenschen
And from there on foot to the German-Polish border.
When they reached the border heavy rain started to fall.
The Nazis confiscated their money. They had no food to eat.
Polish officers arrived and began to inspect their papers.
They admitted the refugees with Polish passports,
Housing them in military stables. Old, sick and children
Were herded together in most inhuman conditions.
One of the first things that Zindel did in Poland was to send
A postcard to his seventeen year old son Hirsch in Paris.
When Hirsch Grynszpan read the family’s tribulations
He became furious. His heart was filled with rage and hatred
And he decided to avenge their sufferings. On the morning
Of November 7, Hirsch entered a gunsmith’s shop on rue
Faubourg Saint-Martin and purchased a 6.35 calibre pistol
With a box of 25 bullets, for 235 Francs.
Then he took a ride on the Metro to the Solferino stop
And walked to the German Embassy at 78 rue de Lille.
Hirsch told the receptionist that he has some documents with him.
He was received by Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary.
When the German diplomat closed the door Hirsch pulled out
The gun. “You are a filthy Kraut”, he said, “and in the name of
12,000 persecuted Jews here is the document”. He fired five
Bullets from point blank range at vom Rath. The diplomat died
Two days later of his wounds.
The assassination came as a godsend thing for the Nazis.
Hitler denounced it as part of a global Jewish conspiracy
Against Germany. It became a pretext for the well-orchestrated
Pogrom of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.
During the night of November 9-10,1938, in every place
Throughout the Third Reich, Storm Troops attacked Jews
And Jewish institutions.
Hitler’s henchmen burnt down or destroyed in Germany
Nearly two hundred synagogues. They burst into Jewish houses,
Broke the glass of Jewish businesses and beat up Jews wherever
They found them. About ninety people were murdered
And thousands of others were wounded in the street violence.
The Nazis also arrested thirty thousand Jews and sent them
To concentration camps in Buchenwald, Dachau,
And Sachsenhausen. And on top of all this, the Reich
Cynically imposed a billion mark penalty
On the Jewish Community to pay for the damages.
In Berlin hundreds of truncheon swinging storm troops
Led the mob in smashing up the glass plate windows
Of Jewish stores. In the Jewish neighbourhoods of German
Cities the Nazis lit bonfires. They threw on them to burn
Torah scrolls, prayer books and whole libraries. Thousands
Of Germans joined the Storm Troops in the atrocities.
But many resented the pogrom. People watched in horror
The roundup; they cried silently behind their curtains.
On a third floor balcony in Leipzig
Storm Troops shattered a balustrade and pushed
An upright oak wood piano over the edge. It plunged like
A black wingless dragon and fell helplessly to the street.
It crashed on the pavement with a shocking clamour.
Its wooden casing had split. The strings stripped bare
Stood in the middle of the wreckage as an orphan harp
Screaming with a heartbreaking outcry.
poem by Paul Hartal
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Mea Culpa'd
Crusades, blood libels, inquisitions and conversions that were forced,
indifference to the blood of helpless Jews spilt in the holocaust,
a litany of crimes for which the Pope should use his bully pulpit,
and yet equivocates while in denial, hardly mea culpa’d,
will be forgotten soon, because the mantra never to forget
itself will be forgotten and the crimes of Nazi will be set
aside, diminished in importance by great other acts of genocide
and claims they never happened to six million, and the Jews just lied.
Pope John Paul II has expressed condemnation regarding the acts of the Church against the Jews but has failed to admit that the responsibility was not that of individual Catholics but of the Church. Furthermore, he maintains an eerie silence about the passive role that the Church as a whole, as Pope Pius XII in particular (whom he wishes to canonize) played during the Holocaust.
I wrote the first quatrain on 3/14/00 and the second on 2/10/-0, compiling my poems on the Shoah.
3/14/00,2/10/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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I Had Parents-They Were Jews
I HAD PARENTS /THEY WERE JEWS
I had parents-
They were Jews-
I am a Jew
But what of their childrens’ children
And their children, if they have them?
What of this one Freedman- Zeibert family?
What of us, the only family I come from?
What of us?
Where are the Jews?
Will there be any
In a generation or two?
What of all those generations who struggled and sacrificed and stayed alive before us as Jews?
What of them?
What of me?
What of us?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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It's not the Jews that killed Christ. It was a political situation, and it was the Romans who killed Jesus. They put Jesus on the cross, not the Jews.
quote by Monica Bellucci
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Schindler's List
Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party. He was a, womanizer, war profiteer, and saved the lives of 1,100 Jews during the holocaust. He was enigmatic - one man against overwhelming odds who made a difference.
'Save one life and you save the world.'
The tide of evil swept across Europe
And darkness eclipsed the light
Nazi jack-boots stamped down
Upon the necks of the oppressed
Torture and executions were the rule
And for the Jews... Hitler's Final Solution.
Schindler was a German businessman
Successful and enjoying the good life
Wining and dining in the best restaurants,
Making love to beautiful women
Driving fast cars and befriending high ranking SS
While using the black market to make huge profits.
When he saw the treatment of the Jews
Forced to wear the Star of David
Humiliated and beaten, murdered in the streets
Living in ghettos like animals in a zoo
Transported in cattle trucks to death camps
A divine light flickered within his conscience.
And as the flame grew steadily brighter
He purchased a factory employing Jewish labour
Saving them from the gas chamber
Created a list of names and bribed the SS
Risking torture and execution
Schindler saved as many lives as he could.
Those he saved call themselves 'Schindler's Juden'
And after the war Israel honoured him
Giving him the title of Righteous Person.
And he planted a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous
Where it still grows as a sign of one man's morality
Oskar Schindler is buried in Israel.
poem by Colin Ian Jeffery
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Holocaust
In a cold and silent world, weeping people wait,
Hoping and praying to not face this solemn fate.
But even thought they were quiet, as quite as they could be,
They were still found in the dark ghettos, the whole Jewish family.
The cries from the little ones so confused and so afraid,
Were ignored by the wretched Nazis, who caused heartbreak in that day.
They led them on a tearful trail toward to dreaded Auschwitz place.
And treated them like guinea pigs. testing them face to face.
Not to care in the world did the Nazi leaders possess,
Toward the unfair treatment to which placed the Jews in distress.
And all these fears and terrors led up to this fatal loss,
Of all the millions of innocent Jews killed in the Holocaust.
poem by Brenda Kodesh
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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If anyone thinks that Jews can steal into the land of their fathers, he is deceiving either himself or others. Nowhere is the coming of Jews so promptly noted as in the historic home of the Jews, for the very reason that it is the historic home.
quote by Theodor Herzl
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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