Yom HaShoah
(Holocaust Remembrance Day)
Sirens will ring in Israel
Small moment in time
To remember six million slaughtered
Has the world forgotten?
Is our memory so short?
Is history not taught?
The evil of antisemitism
Is raising its ugly head
Even in America
Thoughts on Visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC
Sam Adams
Had never been
To the Holocaust Museum,
Despite the fact
He had lived
And worked in DC for decades
One day after he retired
He said to himself
It was long past time
To finally see the holocaust museum
He went the week
After Charleston,
When the mob had chanted,
Jews will not replace us.
The museum affected him deeply
He had just confirmed
Through DNA
That he had at least 10 percent
Jewish ancestry
Among the 18 other nationalities
Swirling among these bloodlines
Sam Adams was concerned
Those elements of antisemitism
We’re emerging among
The MAGA crowd.
But he dismissed
The fears that Trump
Was another Hitler
As liberal hyperbole
It could not happen here
A new holocaust
Would never happen
But now he was not so sure
here: https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/.../holocaust-poetry.../
No one makes it through life whole without the
Branding: marks, scars, tattoos that testify
To sorrows endur’d, bitter pills swallow’d;
Some say the inner invisible ones
Wounds deepest. My tattoo on the forearm
Pierces through to my soul like a sliver
Infected, pussy, smarting constantly—
I was sub-human, thought expendable.
“Schneller! Schneller!” Under blinding lights bark
Camp guards as we stumble blindly, free from
Cattle car stench upon arrival. My
Precious Gretel taken away at once.
Workers to the left, showers to the right
I’d die in your place, Love, one-thousand times!
© 2016 David W. Palmer
Tonight, I miss God, though I doubt he IS;
All sense of Providence stripped away
Like my wife’s gray smock last time I saw her
Walking naked and welted to showers
From whence the sole cleansing is soul release
From this chamber of horrors which now is
Our life. Dirty Jood they now call me,
Spitting, and striking my dignity down.
The world around me seems strange viewed through
Coiled concertina razor wire,
Cut-off, as it were, from all engagement
With beauty, birds, billowing clouds, blessings.
O God, departed One, return delight’s
Remembrance in Redemption, if You care!
© 2016 David W. Palmer
The siren sounds, the traffic stops,
Pedestrians all pause;
The country screeches to a halt,
Not ‘cause of any laws.
It’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.*
In Israel, they expect
A silent stoppage as a show
Of ultimate respect.
Six million people labeled Jews
All suffered ‘til they died.
Survivors tell their stories
Yet the hatred won’t subside.
Two minutes’ time is all it takes
For life to stop and yet,
We shouldn’t need reminding
Of what no one should forget.
*Yom Hashoah in Hebrew
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