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a survivors tale

An entrance but no exit.
Barbed wire
and stone walls all around.

Blamed for everything
no respect ever shown
forced into labor.

Never fed enough
no warm clothes
sun's heat
exhausted all the time.

Shadows linger
death always near.

They whip you
curse at you
use you in every way feasible.
Victims you see have no say in
the matter.

You try to hang on
even to the edge of deaths door
It's so hard
when there is no strength left
in which to fight.

The living
they work
the dead
they decay
and so we wait
until someone comes.

Author notes

This is a emotional poem about the holocaust. You said you wanted to feel something. I feel anger when I think of everything these people went through.

In a list

A contest entry

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Comments

1 - 6 of 6

  • dutch2lips gold member
    July 26

    Edit | Reply
    I also have written a poem about the holocaust, i so hope that people will read and digest all that has happend, maybe, maybe something like this will never happen again, a good poem, thank you for entering

  • Vera Rich
    April 26
    Edit | Reply
    I am gradually working through my backlog of "poems for comments", I do apologize for the delay, but I am seriously behind schelule with various commissions, and hence can only allow VERY limited time for Allpoetry.

    This poem clearly catches the sense of anger you mention in your notes, and - for someone who was clearly NOT personally involved - is a bold attempt to penetrate the sufferings of the holocaust victims. And, in general, you have managed to control your chosen "free" verse-form, so that it does not break down - as many attempts at the form do - into, effectively, chopped up prose.

    However, on the technical and factual side there are a few points which you should perhaps consider.

    1) The title. There seems to me to be no obvious reason for omitting the apostrophe from what would conventionally be written as "A Survivor's Tale".

    2) Likewise why "deaths door" and not "death's door"? Though I should strongly advise finding an alternative and fresher expression than this cliche.
    Apart from the fact that it IS a cliche, coupling this expression with "edge" seems rather a mixed metaphor. If you decide to keep "death's door", perhaps you should consider changing "edge" to "threshold"

    3) The dead victims did not, in fact, "decay". Bodies were normally cremated immediately. There are of course reports that towards the end of the War, some bodies were processed into - e.g. soap, this may well be true, but I personally have never encountered irrefutable factual evidence of this. My work on holocaust records dealt with cremated victims only.


  • Symphony
    February 13
    Edit | Reply
    Wow - very chilling indeed, sent shivers down my spine;

    Not only did I feel like I could feel what they felt, it was also like we saw what they saw, and experienced their seven senses through the words you used...

    Very descriptive, and visually active ....

    Thank you for entering, and sharing this with us


    • trekkergirl
      February 13
      Edit | Reply
      Thanks for commenting on this. I liked the way it turned out. Very descriptive and I was very angry at how this could have happened. We are all suppose to be intelligent creatures how could we have let such an inhumane thing happen. So I wrote about it.

  • Vera Rich
    November 20, 2008

    Edit | Reply
    Sorry - you seem to have misunderstood the requirements of my competition - it was for poems about Poetry and/or poets. Certainly, many poets and aspiring poets perished in the Holocaust - but this poem is not specific to them!

    I appreciate the anger to which you refer - and wish you every with this poem, elsewhere - but as far as the "Celebrating poetry and poets" competition is concerned, I do have to say "No".


  • innocence jaded.xx
    November 16, 2008
    Edit | Reply
    Woww. This is one of the most deep poems I've read all day. Very heartfelt, and very gut wrenching. It's really sad that this happened, and it's horrible what happened to those people. It really is.
    Thanks for entering & good luck. Welcome to the finalists♥

1 - 6 of 6