Auschwitz Poem by Colin Ian Jeffery

Auschwitz

Rating: 4.0


(Nazi death camp)



Chimneys billow white smoke
Ovens fired and ready
Waiting for train arriving
Cattle wagons packed with Jews.

Orchestra of prisoners
Weep as they play Mozart
Performing Nazi scheme
Calming people in the trucks.

Guards with barking snapping dogs
Herd people from wagons
Shouting for them to hurry
Moving on towards the camp.

SS officers waiting
With doctors in white coats
Ready to select and divide
Choosing who lives and who dies.

Fit and strong, mostly men live
Worked until they drop
Then sent to gas chambers
Bodies loaded into ovens.

Sick, weak, elderly and children
Sent directly to showers
Told to strip to be deloused and bathed
Not knowing it was the killing place.

Some women try hiding children
Under clothes hanging on pegs
But prisoners' Kommando
Search clothing supervised by SS.

Standing naked, embarrassed
Shower doors are closed
Gas hisses through ceiling vent
Panicking they scream in terror.

Choking gas overcomes them
As they fight desperately for air
Building human pyramid
Almost reaching to the ceiling.

When the doors are opened
Bodies are removed
By prisoners' Kommando
Gold teeth and rings removed.

Death takes ten minutes
Bodies carried into lifts
Fed into ovens
Chimney smoke turning black.

Kommando work quickly
With another train coming
Cattle wagons packed with Jews
Ready for selection who lives or dies.

Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Topic(s) of this poem: holocaust
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
In Poland, during Second World War,160 miles south-west of Warsaw the Nazis built their most notorious death camp. At one time over ten thousand entered gas chambers daily. Not less than three million died there. Above the main gates ‘Arbeit macht frel' (works makes you free) . Cruel Nazi joke. Only death made them free.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Close
Error Success