The clear, sweet evil of that simple name,
so redolent of sweaty viciousness,
of Spite is Right, of sin divorced from blame,
of seedy placemen, bloated with success,
did not fit with his flinty newsreel face.
This quarry, tracked down by a newer gang,
the old, tired formula once more in place,
would get a just, fair trial - and then he'd hang.
They showed him film of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
On all the panels of his glassy dock
the thin ghosts grinned, like Death's Heads, come to mock.
Who can feel pity for six million shades?
Yet one lone man (a worthless one, allowed)
hemmed in by death, still harrows and degrades.
Categories:
eichmann, history,
Form: Sonnet
Gabriel A. Levicky
A DEAD TYPEWRITER
OR
1000 + 1 JUDEN VERLASSEN*
Here I go again!
The not-so blind date
With history
Narrowed my and-I-thought-they-have-seen-everything eyes.
All I can touch
Is
A paper, a report
Blown in from the past.
Everything else becomes a crippling echo.
Paris 9.4.1942
To
Berlin.
Attention: Eichmann.
Time: 8:55 am, transport # D901/23
From Le Bourget-Drancy to Auschwitz
With 1000 Jews
Has been just dispatched.*
Each Jew received 2-week provisions.
Please confirm.
Neatly typed Pica letters report.
On a polished typewriter,
A victim of war,
Now long dead.
The earth is not round yet
And
It is not turning.
Only the past is rotating, whirling
In the autumn park carousel.
Now you feel it.
Now you don’t.
NYC, October’ 01
*Based on the found written report dated 9/4/1942, sent at 10:30 AM by an anonymous Nazi officer stationed in Paris
to Eichmann
in Berlin
Categories:
eichmann, political, autumn,
Form: Free verse