Holocaust

adolf wuz a won bawled arsewhole

Eye don't know sheet 'bout itt.
Eye just red storeez 'bout itt.
It wuz hotter den hell inda stoves
und dat zyklon bee stunk eye gess.
Won whiff und youse saw mo den starz.
Itt wuz lyke lytes out.
Dat sheet ain't funnee.
Dat sheet ain't wryte.
Phuck nawtzies.
If eye had won ball eye'd bee sik tew.
Phuck adolf.
He wuz a won bawled arsewhole.

Anonymous said:<< post removed >>

[b]The idea of this comp. came into my mind after watching the moving Inglorious Bastards directed by Tarantino.[/quote]

I just wanted to suggest another more appropriate and timely film ... The documentary "Night Will Fall" speaks more to what you seek in this challenge.

Available on YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6SJhDl1z7RY

Poetryman said:Most people who were in the concentration camps were not POW's, they were Jews who were taken from their homes before the war began and exterminated. So the small numbers who survived had nothing to do with the war. POW's were military soldiers from the rest of the world who were held in prison camps that were not the same as concentration/extermination camps. So are you asking for poems about what it was like to be a soldier taken captive or a Jew who was gassed to death, independently of the war? There is no comparison between soldiers who had some protections through the Geneva Convention, including food provided by the Red Cross, and Jews who were stripped of every bit of their humanity and starved, beaten, tortured, raped and murdered before being thrown into mass graves.

As someone who was born 20 years after the war, I can't imagine what that was like. How does one imagine being turned into a lampshade after death?

JJ

I could not have put it better! Thanks for the clarifications you provided. This competition is ill conceived from the start. The subject is political and there is (was) a great difference between POWs defined as military personnel and inocent civilians like Jews in concentration camps.
I quite agree with sodium 589 as well, but people missed his points either because of ignorance or because they just like participating in competitions.
The funny thing is that so far I did not read any poem written from a POW's point of view as requested by the host. They are all written from the innocent civilian victim's point of view, so the host, sticking to his rules , should ignore them, but I don’t think he will cause he is also ignorant and/or confused.

Thanks.

To put some light into what may end up causing much heat, the wartime POW camps were in purpose separate from the pre-war political concentration camps. However the concentration camps did not become deliberate death camps until the middle of WWII, following the Schwansee conference at which the Nazis' Final Solution was decided; then, deportations under the guise of 'resettlement' with extermination intended began.

Not all POWs were treated to the letter of the Geneva convention, Russians and those known to be of Jewish origin faced great mistreatment and were utilised as slave labour. My father as a British national serviceman stationed in 1950s Germany recalled visiting a cemetery that had been created in memory of 'soldiers of the Red Army who were murdered by the German Fascists' (mainly through being worked to death) and who were buried in it.

Eye wuz inna happee jail once

Eye wuz a prizonher once.
Itt wuz nawt inna war.
Itt wuzint inna genocyde faktoree kneether.
Dey maydem wear flowerz dare.
Dey starvedem.
Dem places sukk.
Eye wuz just inna reglar jail.
Eye mayde bail und skipped tew mai lou.
Eye tank Gawd evry dai.

Lonely road
Here I stand, staring at the sky
with many questions, but no answers why.
Like why am I standing here all alone,
forced to face these fears all on my own?
I was once told, i'd walk a lonely road,
but I couldn't imagine how far this road could
truly go.
But here I am, i'm still a walking man.
I'm still walking man,
through this uncharted land.

Well I guess it's true what they say
that this is not paradise.
Who am I to argue, I gotta take what I can take.
Even though I thought to end it all,
I even thought about it twice,
but I came so far to end it with a choice that wasn't worth to make.

My momma told me when I was a young man
"Don't ever beg for nothing boy. This world is not about giving out any hands."
many years have passed and momma I finally know,
what you tried to tell me so long ago.
I see my demons! They hide in society!
The're everywhere I see!
I even feel them inside of me,
But still I stay upon this road that lies ahead.
Until another lonely soul finds me here
lying dead..


Well I guess it's true what they say
That this is not paradise.
Who am I to argue, I gotta take what I can take.
Even though I thought to end it all, I even thought about it twice,
But I came so far to end it with a choice that wasn't worth to make.

Chiyo said:I'd rather not dare to write a poem from the perspective of someone who'd suffered in many ways in the concentration camps. But this is only my opinion.

Then why comment? who cares what you think unless u enter
your just clogging up the thread...
this is a competition.. Whatever...


Petrified under constant guard,
no motion, no thoughts, dead inside..
famish, debased, disease and death

a daily grind, no way out a long way from home.
It's over now, no one can hear you now
There is no fight only death

I am someone very ignorant of history who has not researched the topic adequately. I did once read a book by Victor Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor and doctor, entitled Man's Search for Meaning, which seemed a very dependable, evocative, and soul-stirring work. I truly think Frankl managed to create something beautiful and significant from his suffering, which he attested was an inevitable part of life. I recommend this book highly. Once again, I admit I am not in the know. I do not wish to offend anyone, and my heart goes out to those who suffered the atrocities. I feel compelled however to share a poem about a few details that haunted me about the book. Thank you.

Maybe

humbly for the Holocaust sufferers

maybe I would have been excited
like all or most of them did
when they were rewarded
by the ladle dipped low in the tureen
to infuse peas into the thin soup

and maybe I would have surprised myself
by being tired enough
to fall asleep on my neighbor
on those wooden planks for beds
as I learned all or most of the prisoners did
even though back home
in normal circumstances
one could never sleep in such a setting
without one's peculiar idiosyncrasies
or pillows placed a certain way

and maybe I would have decided
to live not in the past or future
but in the present moment
as all or most of the sufferers
who held onto their sanity
seemed to realize they had to do

I will never know
if I would have followed
in their mental and spiritual footsteps

but something in me yearns
to be one with their ineffable humanity
to have been able to do something
especially now
even if it means
something as meaningless
as writing about them
and how I wish I held the answer
in a poem

^  that’s a cracker of a poem, fair play to ya

We packed our bags
Momma tells me we are going on a trip
I can hear the trains now
I am so excited

Craic, I didn't understand what you meant... I am interested to know. Can you elaborate?

just sayin' it was a good poem, Lady. I don't want no trouble

Well, thanks Craic. I really appreciate it. I just didn't understand the reference...

toniscales said:I am someone very ignorant of history who has not researched the topic adequately. I did once read a book by Victor Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor and doctor, entitled Man's Search for Meaning, which seemed a very dependable, evocative, and soul-stirring work. I truly think Frankl managed to create something beautiful and significant from his suffering, which he attested was an inevitable part of life. I recommend this book highly. Once again, I admit I am not in the know. I do not wish to offend anyone, and my heart goes out to those who suffered the atrocities. I feel compelled however to share a poem about a few details that haunted me about the book. Thank you.

I read that book as well and Dr. Frankl eventually developed Logotherapy, which is a kind of rationalization therapy. To find meaning in in your life from your struggles and successes. It has an existential component as well, but that is the gist of it.

Thank you, chowmaster. You're absolutely correct and astute. You probably are more knowledgeable about the book than me. I have to admit I was so absorbed with his personal account I didn't pay enough attention to the Logotherapy and existentialist theme. I was just haunted by those tiny details that resonated so much with me...