The day dad went to belsen

[Biggus]

The tank stopped abruptly
And we sat open mouthed
At what we beheld
Our brains could not assimilate
What our eyes were seeing
Great mounds of …. What?
It can’t be that.
All the horrors of war
We had witnessed, experienced
Since D-day
Did not prepare us
For what Belsen held in store
A place devoid of God
A place where even birdsong was banished
We dismounted and approached on foot
As each step brought us closer
Our worst fears were realised
We saw that the mounds were indeed bodies
Or something likened to bodies
Then I saw an androgynous figure
Stood at the fence
A dirty little bag of bones
Wrapped in dirty rags
Bony fingers clutching the wire
Like a birds feet gripping a trig
I reasoned it was a girl
As the rags might well have been a dress
“We are English” I said
“Don’t be afraid”
Her fleshless face was beyond gaunt,
Her shaved head little more than a skull
Her huge eyes were so black and deep
I could see into her soul
A weak smile played round her mouth
And tears welled up in her huge eyes
I would not have believed it possible
For her desiccated form
To have held enough moisture for tears
But they were there
And they ran down the grubby cheeks
Of the little bag of bones
And dripped onto her ragged dress
We ran to the gates
And forced them open
Then we stepped into the jaws of hell
More skeletal figure appeared
From amidst the piles of rotting corpses
Bemused and disbelieving
They hugged us, and thanked us
Some cried, some laughed
We gave them water
And fed them our rations
Not realising we were finishing
What the Germans had started
The food was too rich
For their weak emaciated bodies
What we didn’t realise
Was we were killing them with kindness
The girls name was Elise
She was the same age as me
But she died the next day
Her face with the huge tear filled eyes
Haunted my dreams
All of the days of my life
Penetrating my soul
And breaking my heart
My only consolation
Was that she at least knew kindness
Once more before she died

[Bar22do]

Biggus this is so unbearably poignant that even if there were any technical neats to suggest, I couldn't see them... I used to work with camps survivors, once worked with a Bergen Belsen miraculous survivor and who had so much to tell that he kept silent most of the time... is your poem really about what your dad witnessed himself? It must have been impossible to endure... Thanks for this courageous sharing, be well - Bar

[zoolane]

It saw great, harrowing to said least, very move to event the Belsen, I hope you dad fine some peace from dream. xxxx Very words help the reader to understand visual the picture in their head to what your dad saw.

[Hawkman]

This is indeed a powerful piece, Biggus. We have grown up with the black and white newsreel images and second hand tales... But what must it have been like to see it, smell it, live it? One is marked for life by such an experience.

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

I sometimes think that the criterion for our humanity is our ability to bear witness to what you have written, to imagine it; but at the same time, another criterion compels us to deny it, to refuse to believe that it could have happened.

One of my sons accompanied me to Dachau once. I couldn't bring myself to go in, not as a free man who hoped to go on living so while he joined the others who were exploring the place I walked around the perimeter of the doubly barbed-wire fence.

I am immensely grateful to you for having written this. The line "We gave them water" brought me very close to tears.

[Biggus]

Thank you all very much for your comments.

Bar22do wrote "is your poem really about what your dad witnessed himself?"

Yes he was 22 at the time at it did indeed haunt his dreams

Hawkman wrote " We have grown up with the black and white newsreel images and second hand tales... But what must it have been like to see it, smell it, live it? One is marked for life by such an experience"

It really angers me when learned people say the Holocaust never happened.

Myshkin my father was once asked if he would go back to Belsen to lay the ghosts to rest but he could never bring himself to return.

[hillwalker]

Biggus - I very rarely comment on your work (although I often read it)

This piece however left me wanting to say so much - in praise of how you were able to create a tender moment from even the most horrific cruelty inflicted on humanity.

Putting aside the topic for a moment, I believe the first 7 lines could be removed to make an even more poignant poem. Thanks for sharing this.

[PrinceMyshkin]

It really angers me when learned people say the Holocaust never happened.

When I first encountered the phenomenon of "Holocaust denial" I was blown away. I had previously thought that what we Jews call the Shoah was the nadir of anti-Jewish activity but... here was a whole new variety of it. I thought to write a novel about the philosophical implications of living in a world where a central aspect of your consciousness was denied...After reading about the particulars of the attempted genocide in more detail, I got no further than two leitmotifs for the book I hoped to write:

1) That those who were alleged to have been murdered were "died-again Jews" in that it was the task of those of us who came after them to put them to death all over again by proving that they had been killed, and

2) What I assumed was the underlying thought of the deniers: "We know what we know and we do what we do." Meaning, either, that they knew the Holocaust had taken place but it served their purposes to not know it; or secondly that at some level they 'knew' it had not taken place... "and we do what we do," meaning that in either of the above cases, what they knew or chose not to know would facilitate their doing what they needed to do - bring about another Shoah and this time finish the job.

[Biggus]

Thank you both

[hack]

This is more than poignant,
it is crushing! I am sorry
that your father had to
learn, so young, what men
are capable of doing to
their brothers...peace...

[Biggus]

Thanks Hack

[kiz_paws]

I thank you for portraying your father's words in this precious poem. I don't know what else to say except that I was deeply moved and thankful to have read this account.
~K♥zzo

[dibyendra]

I am moved by this poem. This portrays many vivid imageries!



Bony fingers clutching the wire
Like a birds feet gripping a trig



And tears welled up in her huge eyes



What we didn’t realise
Was we were killing them with kindness



she at least knew kindness
Once more before she died

[Biggus]

Thank you both very much indeed

[blazeofglory]

In this poem I picture the incensed man. This is put in a way as if we are in the war witnessing all kinds of vindictiveness, and this is a tale generally that remains untold and no can write with so much brilliance the depiction of so vividly and I we can figure how the confrontation deepens in the poem

[qimissung]

You did good with this, Biggus. I have an acquaintance whose grandparents were in concentration camps. Her grandmother was one of the bodies. Tossed on a heap of other bodies, but she was alive. She was in a coma, caused by an infection she got from being infested with lice.

[Biggus]

Thank you Blaze

[Biggus]

Thank you Gimisung