Poetry competition CLOSED 10th February 2021 6:22pm
WINNER
slipalong
slipalong
RUNNERS-UP:
mysteriouslady
and MadameLavender
Page:
Holocaust Memorial Day
Anonymous
Poetry Contest Description
Write a simple poem of no more than 10 lines on Holocaust Memorial Day
Wednesday 27th January 2021 marks Holocaust Memorial Day in the United Kingdom.
The Holocaust (The Shoah in Hebrew) was the attempt by the Nazis and their collaborators to murder all the Jews in Europe. From the time they assumed power in Germany in 1933, the Nazis used propaganda, persecution, and legislation to deny human and civil rights to German Jews. They used centuries of antisemitism as their foundation.
By the end of the Holocaust, six million Jewish men, women and children had been murdered in ghettos, mass-shootings, in concentration camps and extermination camps.
Holocaust Memorial Day remembers the victims of all past and present cases of genocide including Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
I have personally visited the Dachau concentration camp in Germany and it was nothing short of harrowing. I don’t think I said one word walking around it.
More Information can be found here: https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/the-holocaust/
For this contest...
I would like you to please write a simple poem of no more than ten lines on the topic of the Holocaust memorial.
Rules
•Please be respectful of those that have died. No inappropriate humour.
• New poems only
• No more than 10 lines
• No images / audio / video / visual poems
• Up to 2 entries per human being
• 1 Week
The Holocaust (The Shoah in Hebrew) was the attempt by the Nazis and their collaborators to murder all the Jews in Europe. From the time they assumed power in Germany in 1933, the Nazis used propaganda, persecution, and legislation to deny human and civil rights to German Jews. They used centuries of antisemitism as their foundation.
By the end of the Holocaust, six million Jewish men, women and children had been murdered in ghettos, mass-shootings, in concentration camps and extermination camps.
Holocaust Memorial Day remembers the victims of all past and present cases of genocide including Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
I have personally visited the Dachau concentration camp in Germany and it was nothing short of harrowing. I don’t think I said one word walking around it.
More Information can be found here: https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/the-holocaust/
For this contest...
I would like you to please write a simple poem of no more than ten lines on the topic of the Holocaust memorial.
Rules
•Please be respectful of those that have died. No inappropriate humour.
• New poems only
• No more than 10 lines
• No images / audio / video / visual poems
• Up to 2 entries per human being
• 1 Week
SIX MILLION CHRISTS
those six million plus who wore Christ's fragile form
and let his woeful eyes watch from the gates of Auschwitz,
his bones scorched and hallowed in trenches,
haunting from dusty books, those hazed grey images
that repel yet beg for the study of wasted flesh and desperate want
and the horror of man's dark truth
his holy voice a rasp and whisper barely discernible above the fray of politics
asking if you who can only watch tributes to those long dead
would have stood against the tide of hate that carried so much hell
and let his woeful eyes watch from the gates of Auschwitz,
his bones scorched and hallowed in trenches,
haunting from dusty books, those hazed grey images
that repel yet beg for the study of wasted flesh and desperate want
and the horror of man's dark truth
his holy voice a rasp and whisper barely discernible above the fray of politics
asking if you who can only watch tributes to those long dead
would have stood against the tide of hate that carried so much hell
Written by javalini
Go To Page
Anonymous
Thank you for your entry Javalini 🙂
If Ashes Could Speak
Would you listen,
to what they have to tell?
Devils come in many forms
destroying, conquering, annihilating
yet the remnant lives on.
Shabbat shalom—your souls and spirits
cannot be cancelled, and
the great cloud of witnesses have taken you in.
Glory to the God Most High, who’s breath
makes all things new from dust and ash.
Written by MadameLavender
Go To Page
Paper sculptures
In the fires that scorched the Torah's rights
Manuscript's trod into the muddy street, dogs scavenging.
White knuckles, behind the iron fist; wolves circling
Swastika ideology that wrapped a minority, to gag, xenophobia.
The rush hour into a grey nowhere, the rats crept all over each.
Cattle trucks towards starvation, black mass to incarnation.
Skeletons ever haunt, emaciated, behind chain fence pretence.
The free world watches, demagogues, still defile the innocent.
More than prayer rising from the Zyklon B gas edits.
Burn our will, with a branding iron; shalom, how many candles lit?
Manuscript's trod into the muddy street, dogs scavenging.
White knuckles, behind the iron fist; wolves circling
Swastika ideology that wrapped a minority, to gag, xenophobia.
The rush hour into a grey nowhere, the rats crept all over each.
Cattle trucks towards starvation, black mass to incarnation.
Skeletons ever haunt, emaciated, behind chain fence pretence.
The free world watches, demagogues, still defile the innocent.
More than prayer rising from the Zyklon B gas edits.
Burn our will, with a branding iron; shalom, how many candles lit?
Written by slipalong
Go To Page
We, as Those Who Were Not There
for Holocaust Memorial Day
I read an article by a survivor,
on a news website.
Separated thus by time and place,
so many years and miles making
that enormous gulf, a red canyon
of human memory, I cannot feel
the death march in my sole.
We can’t experience the whole
of human wickedness inflicted on
that man. But we can own our privilege.
I read an article by a survivor,
on a news website.
Separated thus by time and place,
so many years and miles making
that enormous gulf, a red canyon
of human memory, I cannot feel
the death march in my sole.
We can’t experience the whole
of human wickedness inflicted on
that man. But we can own our privilege.
Written by The_Silly_Sibyl
(Jack Thomas)
Go To Page
It is sad to remember ALL THOSE WHO DIED
the six million people of the Jewish faith
and those millions of others
gays communists blacks the cripples
and those in mental homes
ALL WELL KNOWN AT THE TIME
all crying out to be rescued
ALL LEFT
to die
the six million people of the Jewish faith
and those millions of others
gays communists blacks the cripples
and those in mental homes
ALL WELL KNOWN AT THE TIME
all crying out to be rescued
ALL LEFT
to die
Anonymous
Thank you for your entries Madame Lavender, Slipalong, The_Silly_Sibyl & Drone 🙂 Lovely stuff.
I wrote this poem in response the the 12/10/19 shooting of six people inside a kosher bodega in Jersey City, New Jersey (USA). It was the day after the shooting, and after a series of anti-Semitic attacks that just didn't seem to stop. This was written the day after Jersey City happened, but it was my reaction to the escalation that had been building that entire year. (not a competition piece)
2019 in America was the worst year on record for anti-Semitic hate crimes, with 2,107 separate incidents according to the Anti-Defamation League, and according to the FBI accounted for 57.8% of all hate crimes for that year. In America, Jews make up just under 2% of the total population (1.8%).
Thank you, Missy, for allowing me to post this here.
Leave Us Alone!
I’m sick to death of Jews being killed for simply surviving
This time, two murdered in a kosher mom-n- pop in Jersey City
Schools, stores, synagogues, there are no safe places left
You look Jewish, you talk Yinglish, you’re gonna get hurt
I have just one question- it’s painfully simple to answer, so let’s go
Do Jews rampage in your stores, your places of worship, your schools?
Have there been recent yarmulke clad or wig-wearing murderers
Who plotted, planned, then murdered you and yours in cold blood?
No
So what makes you so special, you racist, demented monster?
You think Jews are evil, diseased, have no right to be left alone
What, preacher-man or talk radio fanatic riled you up again?
Can’t think for yourself, so grab a weapon and spout toxic rhetoric!
Let me break down for those non-Jews who are intellectually ignorant
Jews don’t need (or want) to seduce your kids, convert you, or run banks
If it seems like we’re smarter or better, history demands us to be that way
We have to work three times as hard just to get one of your opportunities
So
Do yourself a solid, do the world a favor, and just believe we don’t exist
If that is the alternative to death, any Jew would take it - I know I would
Our families came to America centuries ago to escape others just like you
America may be a land of kindness, but that kindness comes with a price
This isn’t about what went down 70 years ago, or the Gaza business
Racism, prejudice, xenophobia, all this anti-Semitism is a cover-up
The fact of the matter is painfully obvious to anyone who looks closely
you, non-Jewish bigot, are terrified of the wrong demon - yourself
2019 in America was the worst year on record for anti-Semitic hate crimes, with 2,107 separate incidents according to the Anti-Defamation League, and according to the FBI accounted for 57.8% of all hate crimes for that year. In America, Jews make up just under 2% of the total population (1.8%).
Thank you, Missy, for allowing me to post this here.
Leave Us Alone!
I’m sick to death of Jews being killed for simply surviving
This time, two murdered in a kosher mom-n- pop in Jersey City
Schools, stores, synagogues, there are no safe places left
You look Jewish, you talk Yinglish, you’re gonna get hurt
I have just one question- it’s painfully simple to answer, so let’s go
Do Jews rampage in your stores, your places of worship, your schools?
Have there been recent yarmulke clad or wig-wearing murderers
Who plotted, planned, then murdered you and yours in cold blood?
No
So what makes you so special, you racist, demented monster?
You think Jews are evil, diseased, have no right to be left alone
What, preacher-man or talk radio fanatic riled you up again?
Can’t think for yourself, so grab a weapon and spout toxic rhetoric!
Let me break down for those non-Jews who are intellectually ignorant
Jews don’t need (or want) to seduce your kids, convert you, or run banks
If it seems like we’re smarter or better, history demands us to be that way
We have to work three times as hard just to get one of your opportunities
So
Do yourself a solid, do the world a favor, and just believe we don’t exist
If that is the alternative to death, any Jew would take it - I know I would
Our families came to America centuries ago to escape others just like you
America may be a land of kindness, but that kindness comes with a price
This isn’t about what went down 70 years ago, or the Gaza business
Racism, prejudice, xenophobia, all this anti-Semitism is a cover-up
The fact of the matter is painfully obvious to anyone who looks closely
you, non-Jewish bigot, are terrified of the wrong demon - yourself
Anonymous
Thank you for your entry, InEchoingSilence. This is just to clarify this was entered as a non-entry due to the length. It is however, a highly relevant poem x
Hidden Suffering
It was always there
faded ink~like tattoo
though we never knew
until she was gone
she was the strongest person I will ever know
she hid her pain
she hid her truths
she hid the blood and scars
she hid it all
under a tiny band~aid from her curious grandkids with a smile...
It was always there
faded ink~like tattoo
though we never knew
until she was gone
she was the strongest person I will ever know
she hid her pain
she hid her truths
she hid the blood and scars
she hid it all
under a tiny band~aid from her curious grandkids with a smile...
