Shattered Nights

 
Through my maternal heritage,  
I am Gaelic Scots, Welsh  
and Breton (Celtic Brittany).  
 
Through my paternal ancestry,  
I am joined at the influences of  
the eastern Ukraine (White Russian),  
Polish/ Hungarian & German Jews.    
 
Through my father’s lineage,  
we shall most likely never know        
the exact count of how many  
members were taken,  
 
to perish on the way to  
or while interned at the camps.  
 
 So many (also with families)  
were swept up in the mindset of  
murder for the sake of murdering,  
 
as the war brought out the sadist          
in those who had it in them  
 
(finding a niche, their darkest outlet)  
through the epileptic Hitler.  
 
And through “ethnic cleansing”  
(covering up what any such  
cleansing was really all about),  
 
approximately 50 million total          
perished due to World War II,  
 
which included two-thirds of the          
Hungarian gypsy population.  
 
Although history says he was a  
vegetarian, the Austrian-born,  
pork-dumpling-loving Hitler  
 
hated just about everything  
and everybody (except the  
 
aforementioned dumplings,  
and Napoleon, of course).  
 
I’ve always been proud of the  
men & women on both sides of  
the family, who fought & died,  
 
So no more of them would be  
dragged out of their beds during  
the terror of shattered nights.  
 
The quote that came out as a  
result of the war, I find the most  
 
arresting and particularly              
haunting & prophetic, was from:  
 
*Beloved nineteenth-century  
German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine,  
 
Who wrote in his 1820–1821 play  
“Almansor” the famous admonition:  
 
“Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt,  
verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.”  
 
“Where they burn books, they will  
also ultimately burn people."  
 
 
*encyclopedia ushmm org  
 
 
#heritage