Shoah ~ International Holocaust Memorial Day ~ 27 January 2023

GENOCIDE is still an act that one group of people carry out on another. So, it is imperative that we never ignore International Holocaust Memorial Day annually, January 27

International Holocaust Memorial Day

Shoah means Holocaust

IT IS INCUMBENT upon us all not to turn our back on history. It is right that the international community recalls on this day the terror organised as an industry and to industrial capacity. In the 1960s, when the full horror would remain, largely covered, for at least another twenty years, we took the view that such a thing could never happen again.

As a boy, I could not comprehend the tattooing of a number on a person’s forearm, regardless of age.

Today, it is fashionable to have numbers tattooed on the arms. Often, they are merely the showman’s date of birth. But the popular appliance by tattoo parlours the world over, neatly down-rate / down-grade, that which was done as a means of rendering an individual nameless, known only by a number.

GENOCIDE is still an act that one group of people carry out on another.

Even today, in 2023.

The nations know who they are. Where does the blame lie? With government? Yes. With the people? Most definitely, yes!

For they are the nameless people who put those governments into power in the first place, then turned the other way and will obstinately refute any charge that they know that genocide is taking place, or to use the biblical analogy, ‘pass by on the other side.’

It is one thing for a group of people to resort to genocide because of ancient tribal instincts. That is bad enough. It is as bad as Shoah when a government attempts to wipe out an indigenous population; it is Shoah when a government builds concentration and re-education camps. To those who argue that we can see videos of the wonderful, uplifting, regenerating work of communities, of peoples, of nations even, who will then be welcomed back into the wider community, I have one place name on my mind:

T h e r e s i e n s t a d t

S H O A H

I

I’m a man,
- A whole man. 

They told me to drop my trousers.

I’m a whole man. 

They applied doctrine,
twisted doctrine.
I’m not even half a man;
a religious scalpel
separated me from manhood,
relegated me untermenschen.

“You’re not a human being!!
You’re subhuman!!!
A slave class!”

No, I’m NOT! 

The fist was like a battering ram
knocking my jaw clean out of line.

I stumbled, staggered, fell.
Only in a millisecond
did I see the riding boot
like I used to wear;
A jackboot, they say!

I can’t see now. 

They say it’s because I’m a Jew.
They say I slaughtered Christ.
But He too is a Jew.

They say I killed the church.
They say I pay the penalty
as befits a Jew.

I sit here; it feels like a muddy ledge;
It feels like rock and sand,
slippery, slimy, wet
A pit,
And a stench.

There are laughs and cheers,
cheers and jeers
as each shot rings out.

“because he was a Jew”;
“because she was a Jew”;
“because he was a pimp Jew”;
“because she was a whore Jew”.

I can’t see you see.
My eyes have gone
– that jackboot –
those thumbs
The price of answering back 
But I’m glad I did
I defied them.
It must be me soon. 

But I hear a baby cry.
I’m numbed by the smash,
I’m chilled to the bone,
the silence skewers me;
A cheer lets up

“Kill all the Jews!”

The horrific image that I had seen in newsreels as a boy, remembered, forgotten, and which, suddenly - 48 years later - with no warning, came to mind on the Albert Dock, Liverpool on the evening of 12 July 2008. I could only deal with it by writing out my anguish and dread. Afterwards, I tracked down the image. What frightened me more than anything was remembering the spectacles. IBM

II

Where is Queen Esther now?[i]
I can’t see you see,
But oddly,
I’ve an inward eye;
They can’t see what I can see!
They wouldn’t comprehend
the scene anyway!!

III

The scene, you ask?

What scene?

What are you talking about Jew?

You’re sitting on a pit.
You Jews stink as you pile up
And soon you too.

Rats – Jews - All the same.
Only death for you!
Even now when you face oblivion
You Jews still argue back
and try and get one over on us!

Die Jew!!!

IV

They can’t see.
But I can. 

As each pistol shot rings out
And a body crashes down
I see an incredible image.

V

He is tall.
There are many of them.

In fact the more
I look the more I see;
His Name be praised!
What I thought was cloud
is no cloud at all.

I see The Host of Heaven

Magnificent
Glorious
Victorious
Unbowed
Triumphant

even,

and yet so humble,
they replace
the very stars of heaven.

My inward eye catches
another glance

VI

Another Figure
This time, “The Man”
Surely not!

A Whole Man
the like of Whom
none can comprehend.

Oh no!!

VII

But now He too is bound
He too is a Jew
He too is going through hell
Only now do I realise Who He is!

This Heavenly Host
are suddenly subdued!
Terrifying to watch,
they turn their faces away 
in shame and despair,
that their hands are stayed,
restrained
forbade to intervene
by None Other than
הֲכִי גָבוֹהַ,גָבוֹהַ בִּיוֹתֵר
The Most High Ancient of Days

G-D – to you and me!

VIII

But here, two millennia
later, now unrestrained,
they can.

One looks at me
A Shimmering,
Those eyes
deep into my soul;
This Figure stands
here in the pit.

Another
rests his hand
squeezes my shoulder gently
the executioner oblivious
behind his respectable spectacles
even though barely an inch between them;
a school teacher I heard him say

… a personification of that other teacher
Reich-Fuhrer Himmler,
that wicked Haman behind all this.[ii]

It is he, this wicked Haman, behind all this …

Yet another moves to catch me,
in my mind’s eye
the wings of an eagle?!?!

IX

My heart races.
I read once in Scripture
they shall be borne on eagles’ wings

Can that Book be true after all?

X

“Worry not; you’ll be unaware
My task ~ to catch you
and deliver you to eternity 

It does not matter 

Jew
Gentile
Muslim
Homosexual
Mentally Disordered
Physically disabled 

We are all here
We catch you all
Never fear

Keep your eyes on Him 
The Author and Finisher of your faith

The Alpha and the Omega
The First and the Last"

He answers my unspoken
pre-eternal thought

Atheism?
Don’t even give it a thought.
You have the truth now.

A whimsical smile of encouragement

Love flashed in eyes of diamonds
A thief on an execution stake
A shot rings out...

XI

I look down. 
My body is perfect
My eyes are in again
I can see,
I can see! 

HE! Who stands beyond,
Alone, now restored
His Glory,
His Deity,
His Pre-eminence with Moshe and EliYahu …

Surely not? My mind enquires …
… briefly opens His Hands
to my questioning glance
A whisper in my ear even though far away …

Footprints in the sand

as a beautiful mother clutching her babe in arms
crash down on top of my corpse.
They see horror, those who jeer and sneer and cheer
revelling in the inferno of their making

But I see Resurrection!
My wife and daughter join me
reunited
unblemished
untarnished
radiant
beautiful
young again

dieses Wunder des Universums [iii]

XII

And later on that day
or was it a millennia?
I don’t know,
we stood ten thousand times ten thousand [iv]
before the Host of Heaven.

Two great thrones were put in place
The great doors opened
and surely as I write these words now
I saw Two Great Personages enter
And take Their thrones, yes,
walking, not floating
An Incredible Light …
a Third Personage
emanated from them
Der Heilige Geist

XIII

Who is that Fourth in the Furnace?
Did I not cast only three in? [v]
Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nigo
walked out of the furnace
and Nebuchaneddzar
looked on in terror
and caught a glimpse
of the ovens of Auschwitz

Did I not only place three? Then Who is that Fourth Person in the furnace? … … … … … … … and Nebuchadnezzar looked on in terror and caught a glimpse of the ovens of Auschwitz

XIV

The Books were opened
The Court was seated
There was silence in Heaven
for about half an hour [vi]

And I glimpsed the jeerers,
the executioners,
dumb-struck and petrified
as all that they had done
played again before them!

XV

A great gulf stood between them and me,
and I realised it was their pit,
a pit occupied by the ugliest of forms,
total darkness
blackness
isolation infinite!
… very much alive

but like I had been unseeing,
mine was for but a time -
There’s forever.

Awareness,
Isolation
but not oblivion
as they would have hoped.

END

27 January 2023
All Rights Reserved

© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2023

 Afterword

There is a very famous newsreel image of a dejected man being forced to sit on the ledge of a pit; a forage-capped, pince-nez, a soldier holds a pistol to his head; other soldiers stand smoking, laughing and jeering in the background; this was the infamous work of the Einsatzgruppen.

The terrifying opening image is that which - full-size - greeted me in the main entrance to the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem in 2002. I'd known of this image over a lifetime in history books and newsreels. Nothing prepared me for seeing this life-size and it is the only time in my life where captivity reined me in captive, and I was forced to turn about and get out as first as I could.

Suddenly, from childhood, all those images on newsreels of naked mums, grandmas, daughters and aunts came flooding back, and I was absolutely terrified.

And it still terrifies me.

Thankfully, calm returned and I was able to go back in, and I have been back several times since.

This poem is in honour of the young man, and also the young mother and child, and the millions like them, and of all those who died in the Holocaust, for whatever reason, whether in the concentration camps, on the Steppes of Russia or in the ghettos, long marches, or incarcerated for days on end in cattle wagons, and a tribute to all those who still survive those horrendous years.

The poem is metaphysical; my only means of somehow rationalising things, unimaginable.

In 2023, we are still finding hitherto unseen newsreels that shake me to the core, and I say to any denier - you stay out of my way. You are evil. As evil as the people who perpetrated these crimes. Open your eyes.

But since writing that note on January 27, 2021, I now learn that in Guantanamo Bay, the female NCOs were the most to fear. Present Day Irma Grese types!

Originally penned during a quiet dinner in the evening of 12 July 2008 on the Albert Dock, Liverpool, my literary home

[i] The Book of Esther מְגִלַּת אֶסְתֵּ

[ii] The Book of Esther מְגִלַּת אֶסְתֵּ

[iii] this miracle of the universe

[iv] Daniel 3: 25

[v] Daniel 7: 10; Revelation 5: 11

[vi] Revelation 8: 1

[vii] Images in [ii] and [iv] are taken from colour plates in the small bible given to me for Christmas in 1958 by my grandmother … “aged 5 and three quarters after all the questions you have asked me dear”

Image by kind courtesy of Marcin Czerniawski via Unsplash