Holocaust Remembrance Day

Holocaust Remembrance Day is not the rosiest of days, but it is necessary for us to remember. We must never forget that, unless we are vigilant against evil, this sort of evil can easily repeat itself. In honor of the struggle and triumph of the millions of victims of the Holocaust, I've shared this Yala Korwin poem below.

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Yala Korwin, artist and poet, was born in Poland. She survived a labor camp in the heart of Germany, and having no place to return to after the end of WWII, she let the winds carry her to France, where she lived as a refugee for ten years. In 1956 she emigrated to the United States with her husband and young children. Her book To Tell the Story— Poems of the Holocaust was published in 1987 by the now defunct Holocaust Library.
-courtesy of thehypertext.com

You, Who Did Not Survive
BY Yala Korwin

Volumes have been written
to explain how they
who murdered you
came to power
and the reason for their crusade
against you.
For you—the truth lay
in black rifle-barrels
in crematorium fires.
None of you died because
of a great virtue
none because of a great sin.
You died because one dies
from exhaustion
you died because guns kill
because gas kills.

They accused you of greed
ordered you
to take off your shirts
before dying.
They extracted your gold teeth
after you died.

Published in Midstream