International Holocaust Remembrance Day 1/27/2019
I would like to believe the Holocaust never happened
and except for the overwhelming weight of evidence,
I could.
I would like to believe the Holocaust never happened,
that Stille Nacht was not sung beneath the chimneys of Auschwitz,
that the beech trees of Buchenwald did not puke poison in spring,
that the burghers of Munich did not plug their ears to the weeping of Dachau,
that wolves prowling the fences of Treblinka
could still howl through milk teeth without shame.
I would like to believe the Holocaust never happened,
and if I overlook arms inked with numbers,
shoes untied from countless feet, clothes missing bodies,
glasses missing eyes, gold missing teeth, veins missing blood,
I could.
I would like to believe the Holocaust never happened,
and if I believe the strange ovens merely baked a strange bread,
if I disregard the bone smoke pouring into
Luther’s sky,
Goethe’s sky,
Schiller’s sky,
if I ignore snow thick with human ash,
I could.
I would like to believe the Holocaust never happened,
and if I knew boys with church faces could not stretch barbed-wire,
if I was certain murderers could not smile,
could not smooth the mussed hair of daughters while holding matches,
could not settle sweetly onto their nakedly witless wives,
I could.
I would like to believe the Holocaust never happened,
that inside Nazi Germany,
the frenzied scream of Hitler did not vaporize brains,
the efficiency of Himmler did not mesmerize clerks,
the swaying bray of Goebbels did not tranquilize clerics,
that the stench of death was not endured for the promise of roses,
and if blue-eyed blondes had not been fed the candy of race,
I could believe the Holocaust never happened.
I would like to believe the Holocaust never happened,
that photographs were underexposed causing darkness,
that historians wore suits made of facts turned inside out,
so their lie could be easily reversed, corrected, set straight,
proving once and for all the Holocaust never happened.
But to believe the Holocaust never happened,
we would need to commit more crimes against truth,
massacre details; dates, times, locations, railroad schedules,
iron rails and wooden ties, order forms, ink, telephone wire,
canisters, protocols, rules and regulations.
We would need to dispossess the heinous facts
to make room for a falsified fiction.
We would need to eviscerate history
until innocence could no longer be born.
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from: Hell Broke Loose, Poems on the Holocaust, by Warren Gaston, a collection to
be published in 2019.