Auschwitz Child

Many people are telling us we are just over-reacting and it's not going to be that bad. Cooler heads will prevail and he didn't really mean all the hateful things he said. Maybe, but that's what the Germans thought when Hitler came to power.

America stood by and refused to believe what was happening until they were personally attacked. By then, more than 6 million people had died, including me.

Although I was raised Catholic in this lifetime, I remember my sister and I crying brokenheartedly when we read stories about Auschwitz. It was only much later I realized why the Holocaust was so personal for us. We were there. 

This is a poem I wrote when I first remembered my lifetime as a young half-Jewish, Lemko girl, living near the Carpathian mountains in southeast Poland. I was only nine years old when Hitler invaded my country. They killed my father with the men in my village.  My mother, aunt, and I were taken with the other women to Auschwitz. I was separated from them, dying all alone from typhus in a flea-bitten bunk.

I did not understood then what I had done to deserve such hatred and abuse, just as I am sure many of the disenfranchised people in America do not understand why this is happening to them now. So, don't tell me to calm down and it won't be so bad. Too many people stood by and allowed the Holocaust to happen. Never again!

Auschwitz Child
By Laura Guilfoyle

Nine-year-old girl
Hums Slavic lullaby
In narrow wooden bunk,
Hiding a teddy bear
In elbow crook,
Whispering
If they find him,
They’ll take him away.

Huge black eyes
Dominate her gaunt face,
Mocking stubbled head,
Caress of mother’s hand
On jet-black curls
Almost forgotten.
Remember.

They led Father away
With the village men.
Never made it back.
They tore Mother away
Stepping from the railway car.
Arbeit macht frei.

She longs for freedom now,
Fever gripping her body,
Confusion, her mind,
Soul slowly slipping
From its mooring.
Time to go.
 
Yet she lingers,
Comforting other children
In the dark.
Lead them to the light.

I will not leave this
Man-made Hell
Until silent shrieks
Rend indifferent skies!