At the Gates of Auschwitz

At The Gates of Auschwitz Today, I stand At the gates of hell; “Arbeit macht frei,” (work sets you free!) That is Auschwitz. Where they burned God’s children, And the world stood by; Oblivious, To what was happening inside. The League of Nations (Whose mandate was World Peace) Failed! And in 1942 The trains rolled into Auschwitz Carrying God’s children; Packed like cattle into box cars (Cold, diseased, inhumanely treated) Ready for slaughter. Insane hatred condemned them, As in the past For events through no fault of theirs Because they were Jewish. Take, for example, That ocean liner in 1939, The ‘MS St. Louis’ Carrying Jews to Cuba. A scheme of the Nazis To prove; Jews were pariahs, That nobody would welcome, Nor would anyone want. Cuba denied safe harbour. The U.S.A. turned them away, And so did Canada; And they systemically decreed, “It's not our problem!” Germany did have a solution; Ethnic cleansing In the ovens of Auschwitz. And the world looked the other way. The world did not care! Later, when the horror was exposed, The free world would apologize, officially. “If we do not remember the past, We are doomed to repeat it.” At the Dachau concentration camp On the memorial to the Holocaust It is written, “Never Again!” *** Note: On May 13, 1939, the “M.S. St. Louis” left Hamburg, Germany bound for Havana, Cuba with approximately nine hundred and one Jewish refugees aboard, to escape from Nazi persecution. Only twenty-eight passengers were allowed to disembark. The ship then sailed to the United States where it was refused safe entry, and then to Canada and was also refused safe entry. The ship returned to Antwerp, Belgium, and the passengers were granted refugee status in a number of European countries.