Holocaust
by Barbara Sonek
We played, we laughed
we were loved.
We were ripped from the arms of our parents and thrown into the fire.
We were nothing more than children.
We had a future.
We were going to be lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers.
We had dreams, then we had no hope.
We were taken away in the dead of night like cattle in cars, no air to breathe smothering, crying, starving, dying.
Separated from the world to be no more.
From the ashes, hear our plea.
This atrocity to mankind can not happen again.
Remember us, for we were the children whose dreams and lives were stolen away.
This poem is very strong poem full of themes, backgrounds and messages. The poem is written from a child's point of view which is smart so that you can show innocence but also the normal view of what every Jewish person in Germany of most of the countries in Europe knew. This poem shows innocence, terror, death, hope, fear and worry. This kid is worried about its future and is explaining how it was while being dragged away from their homes to the fires. This poem has a whole background behind the story. You can hear the fear in what its saying and the vocabulary is very strong and meaningful. This poem has loads of messages but all of them are written as this kid does not know the whole story behind the holocaust. This kid is saying that all the lives from the children are now spoiled away and the future will be less successful. This kid is also telling the audience that the train to the concentration camps were terrifying and absolutely terrible. The jews were the smart and the needed people in the society so Hitler and the rest of Germany blamed it on them because they are now very successful. The Germans mass murdered most of the jews in Europe and now the ''smart people in the society are not there anymore to teach the new future. This will infect the whole world because now they had to start all over again.
