Auschwitz (poetry)

     This poem was just written a few weeks back and will be included in my Honor's Thesis which is Creative Nonfiction and hopefully when finished in December will be published.  

My we never forget

 

Europe's outcasts viciously sleep

Begging God for their souls

What a horrendous thing - to wake the following day

Realizing freedom is now transported away

Into ghettos they walk in a communal custody

They lied

In the coldness, Auschwitz’s mouth is opening wide.

Is there a God in Heaven

If so show us your great authority!

Why must we plunge into abyss

Of a concentration camp

To be rendered our souls

By Auschwitz’s great might

They are interred - day and night.

Oh, Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Your devastation is so wide -

The unknowing drove in, ignorant of what's inside.

Run ...Run for your very lives!

You've been brought to The Executioner- and few survive.

It is easy to swallow these us whole -

Effectively you murder body and soul

Directly from the trains - rushed through your doors...

As Ghettos are cleared, you’re straining for more.

Auschwitz you seem hidden away

As your soil turns red with blood

Is there anyone to stop you

Something must be done

Or there will remain not one.

Auschwitz chimneys bursting with the wafting burn

Human remains gusting in the air are churned

Swirling dead who inhabit thoughts of remembrance

Abandoned in our vacant painful trance

Dug pits hidden beyond the eyes of God

Auschwitz endures only if no one sees

Covered over by Them,

So that no one would envision this place

To hide what was done –

What of us remains is barely a trace.

The demonic Nazis smile,

Trying to attract and hypnotize.

It is not so hard to mislead the trusting masses

Could God really be giving these us up to die?

Guiltless weeping eyes having to say “Good bye"

We think it's ended

 "...it is resolved, it is over”

We want to believe they screamed their last cries

Listen carefully, and you will hear the vibration,

Of Auschwitz’s faint heartbeat, beneath the soil

In our weakness we call

The criminals ‘Them” and “They”

Are our souls so distinctive and fearless

That we'd have arose and stood in the way?

Thought of the day---- Elie Wiesel" "Night"

I just began reading tonight Elie Wiesel's "Night" and I want to take the time to blog my thoughts here on passages that I find moving, relate-able and just down right terrifying.  I am not sure where this journey talking about this book is going to take us as I am four pages into it and already wanting to talk to an audience that I know will listen, based on the number of readers I have.

" Convinced that this period in history would be judged one day, I knew that I must bear witness.  I also knew that, while I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them.  Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly as language became an obstacle.  It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language.  But how was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted by the enemy?.... Deep down, the witness knew then, as he does now, that his testimony would not be received .  After all it deals with an event that sprang from the darkest zone of man.  Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was.  Others will never know. BUT, wile they understand?

Why this book, why now?  In all honesty it goes back to a question I was asked a little over a month ago by a new friend over lunch.  Why or how do you feel you survived so long?  Meaning of course the upcoming 20 years with AIDS.  I was blown away no one had ever asked me that before, ever.  With that and being asked this week by a new therapist I started to see short term at school.  She asked if I was angry, sad, mad or any other emotional word because I had survived so long?  Again something I had never been asked before.

I am still not exactly sure of either answer, I just know that like Elie Wiesel I feel I HAVE to tell my story of AIDS, I have to tell the overall story of my life---the good , the bad, the ugly, the painful, the beautiful, the lovely, the romantic.  I am not saying it is anywhere near the story or the horrors Mr. Wiesel experienced during World War II and the Holocaust, but in my own life AIDS has been my generations Viral Holocaust and you know something it seems as if NO ONE IS TALKING!  No one is speaking, no one is being the new Paul Monette's or Randy Shilts'.  Why is this?  Is apathy so rampant?  Are we that burnout of thirty years of living with it?  Are there that too few long-term survivors left wanting to speak?  Would anyone listen?  Does AIDS matter to those not living with it?  What will the next thirty years bring? Could there even be survivors then that could recall those early years?  Why isn't seem like anyone is saving our history?Am I the only one who cares?

Dior goes on without Galliano

Dior president recalls the Holocaust in moving speech prior to Christian Dior show, following dismissal of designer John Galliano amid anti-Semitic scandal.  It was a show unprecedented in the history of fashion.

John Galliano's greatest catwalk costumes amid tight security and a heavy police presence, the Christian Dior autumn/winter 2011 collection was shown in Paris this afternoon, in the absence of the man who had conceived it; the disgraced British designer, John Galliano, dismissed and facing trial in France in the wake of an anti-Semitic scandal.

The rue de Varenne on the Left Bank was closed-off and steel barriers were erected to control crowds. The 1,200 guests fought their way through hundreds of onlookers to the entrance of the heavily-guarded Musée Rodin, where the show was staged in a white tent.

The editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour, and her daughter Bee, together with numerous high-profile attendees, including the Russian supermodel, Natalia Vodianova, came in through a back entrance to avoid the mêlée.


The president of Christian Dior Couture, Sidney Toledano, gave a moving speech before the show.  He moved even further to distance the illustrious name of the House of Christian Dior from the repugnant events which have led Galliano to stand trial over a drunken anti-Semitic rant in a Paris bar.
"What has happened over the last week has been a terrible and wrenching ordeal for us all," he said.  "It has been deeply painful to see the Dior name associated with the disgraceful statements attributed to its designer. However brilliant he may be. Such statements are intolerable because of our collective duty to never forget the Holocaust and its victims, and because of the respect for human dignity that is owed to each person (sic) and to all its peoples."
Toledano underlined how deeply-felt had been the horrific nature of the Galliano scandal by revealing that the sister of the founder of the house, Mr Christian Dior, had been sent to Buchenwald, one of the Nazi concentration camps.

He said the values laid down by Mr Dior, since he opened his 'maison' in 1947, continued to be carried on by the wonderful and diverse group of people in the Dior ateliers and studios who dedicated all their time and energy to achieving the ultimate in artisanship and femininity.


The mood at the show was sombre and muted, with more than one guest suggesting the atmosphere was "funereal", something heightened by the black ribbons which tied the name tags to each attendees' black chair; the black carpet; and the plaintive strains of Chopin and Debussy which echoed through the tent, pre-show.
Bernard Arnault, the chairman and chief executive of the luxury supergroup, LVMH, and of Christian Dior, was not present. His wife, Hélène Mercier, a concert pianist, was giving a recital in Canada, a PR executive explained, "and this was all planned before anything happened."

Arnault's daughter, Delphine, who works for LVMH, and his son, Antoine, who is head of communications for the conglomerate, were both in the front row, together with Peter Marino, the architect responsible for the design of the worldwide chain of stores for Dior, Louis Vuitton and Céline, among others. He was dressed, 'comme d'habitude', in a Harley Davidson black leather jacket and cap, and biker trousers.

"There is pathos here," he said, echoing the sense of tragedy which has accompanied John Galliano's downfall. "It feels weird, in fact I'm weirded out."
Other celebrities, clad head-to-toe in Dior, included Anouchka Delon, the daughter of the French film actor, Alain Delon; Alysson Paradis, sister of Vanessa Paradis, the long-term partner of Johnny Depp; the Chinese actress and pop-singer, Fan Bing Bing; and the celebrated fashion photographer, Patrick Demarchelier.
Demarchelier, who has photographed both Galliano and Galliano for Dior creations for the last two decades said: "He is a gorgeous designer. To finish like this? Phew! "
One of many Dior clients, Natalie Berdugo, who arrived in a Dior red fox jacket and chiffon dress, said: "I am wearing Dior and I'm Jewish."

Another client, the wealthy Italian socialite, Carla Maria Orsi Carbone, who was wearing a Dior floral chiffon dress from the current spring/summer collection, said: "It is so sad to me. I love him."
The show opened with an eerie replay of John Galliano's own catwalk appearances, as the teenage American supermodel, Karlie Kloss - only a toddler when the ex-designer joined Dior in late 1996 - struck a flamboyant "Three Musketeers" pose in a black floor-length-cloak, black hat, boots, and velvet knickerbockers.
The collection, featuring 62 models, revisited many of Galliano's favourite themes, being awash with brocade bloomers under tweed jackets, velvets jackets over little, knee-length, frilly skirts, fox and mink jackets with chiffon slips; and "Little Bo Beep"-style smocks and ribbon-tied bloomers.
The collection ended with a parade of barely-there, lingerie-look peignoir-dresses and evening-gowns in ruffled and pleated see-through chiffon, with the models perched on skyscraper-heeled shoes, furnished with ribbons and bows.
As the "theatre" dimmed, and an expectant audience wondered what would happen next, the lights suddenly swelled to reveal the entire, 30-strong members of the Dior studios and ateliers, all dressed in white coats.

Some new poetry---by me

Delicate snowflakes fall
The wind swirling them about
On cold cobblestone streets
Dressed in red wool coat
I walk from school
To our humble shetetl

Nazi's fill our streets
I open our door
Zeidy is reading Talmud
Yarmulke, Tallis and Teflin
In their rightful place
Makes my Zeidy a scholar

I cahnge into my best dress
Ribbons in my hair
Face freshly washed
Sitting ever so quietly
At the linen tablecloth

The sirens yell
The bimbs drop
Mamh lights
Shabbat candles
Ha-olam me-lekh
Elo-heynu Ad-onai
Life
Goes on for now

Homosexual Concentration Survivor

This is not going to be an easy video to watch but I felt very deeply that you should watch this.  It is with Rudolf Brazda who is believed to be the VERY LAST of the gay concentration camps survivors of World War II. 

This story is very dear to my heart since I lost two great aunts in the horrors of the Holocaust who were Jewish. Our family who left Europe before the war broke out convert to Catholic and then in the 1950's to Protestant.  Our family could not at the time get those families out.

This is his story--the only homosexual story I have ever heard about the Holocaust.  Least WE NEVER FORGET.

Rest In Peace Meip Gies

On a personal note I was saddened to hear yesterday the following news.......

Tributes were pouring in today for Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank's family in an Amsterdam attic. Gies, who died Monday, also preserved the famous journal that became "The Diary of a Young Girl." She worked in the office of Anne's father, Otto, and in early 1942, when the Franks went into hiding, she and her husband provided food and other supplies. After the family was betrayed and arrested, she found Anne's diary and kept it until the war ended.

 Excerpts of some tributes:

New York Times -- It was Mrs. Geis’s habit to deflect accolades for defying Nazi occupiers of Amsterdam ... . But to accept that self-description would be to overlook the remarkable selflessness and courage Mrs. Gies demonstrated, an example so powerful that it continues to inspire nearly 70 years later.

The Washington Post -- Her passing represented the loss of the only connection that Anne had to the present world, and that her fans, in turn, had to her. As years passed, and the Holocaust became something that happened a generation ago, then two, then three, Gies alone was our tie.

New York Daily News -- In the end she could not save Anne and her family from betrayal to the Nazis, even by risking all to protect them. But it was Gies who preserved the young girl's diary that will echo through the ages as an expression of faith in the face of incomprehensible evil.

On a ligther not I was happy to hear that Meip lived to be 100 years old and of course turned the home where the Frank's were hidden into a museum.  Meip was instrumental in keeping the story of Anne and her family alive and for reminding us  "NEVER AGAIN".  Rest in Peace my dear Meip, I know Ann is waiting for you in heaven to thank you personally for everything.  One person can make a  difference!