The Holocaust

Herded into the transports Beaten and struck. Defiled Stripped of hope and possessions Man and woman and child Lied to, betrayed, tormented Starved in the bitter cold Cattle-trucked off to horror The weak, the young, the old Where were the men of conscience? Where was the will to save? Where were Pity and Reason? At the wrong side of the grave. Harvesting hair and fillings Harvesting bones and rings Apocalyptic gleaners Where death's cruel sickle swings Dachau, Stutthof, Treblinka Ravensbrueck, Buchenwald Mauthausen-Gusen Plaszow Blood-hungry, wired and walled Auschwitz, Majdanek, Chelmno Belzec and Bergen-Belsen Flossenbuerg and Natzweiler Neuengamme and Gross Rosen How many potential leaders, Einsteins, Chagalls and Heines Mendelssohns, Kafkas, Mahlers Were killed in those killing times? The tree of pogrom and ghetto It grew a bitter fruit And the air and the dust you walk on's Where the past lies underfoot Europe today as always Is a fertile, ancient place But for the ghost-filled cities Of one persecuted race