After Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau Poem by Kevin Cowdall

The sun was out in force when we arrived
and it felt somehow incongruous -
as if there should have been heavy rain
and perhaps the threat of thunder
to prepare us for the unknown,
or punctuate what we already knew.

It takes a conscious effort,
a determined stride, to pass through the gate,
and still a shudder touches the spine.
Arbeit macht frei - Work brings freedom:
a black cynicism for a black, black place,
where the only freedom came with death.

It is not the newsreels or the photographs which horrify;
we have been inured by documentaries and history books.
It is not the desolation of the railway tracks and unloading ramps,
nor the barracks, the death blocks, or gallows.
Not even the gas chambers or crematoria
causes the greatest revulsion.

Above all, it is the personal effects:
the suitcases, the spectacles, the brushes,
the clothes, the shoes, the artificial limbs -
and more than all of these, the hair.
Seven tons of human hair in one huge display:
grey as an old death shroud, or the dust of time stood still.