Holocaust Image

Holocaust Image
By James A. Langley   

I
I cannot forget a certain marked child.
My mind keeps faithfully raising on its
Screen the image of a boy long lost.
I know him not as one knows a neighbor,
A friend, or even shadowy stranger,
Who in a brief interlude intersects 
Our lives.  Yet his face and boyish figure
Haunt me, they haunt me and will still haunt me 
Until this life is done, perhaps beyond.

II
The boy is one of millions of Jews forced
From their homes; rumors are rife: are they now
Headed for pleasant prospects as some are
Desperate to believe—or certain death?
Though mortal danger awaited the Jews,
Deception enhanced their masters’ control.
The boy wears a cap—it sets him apart;
In happier circumstances an artist
Might well paint him, using the simple but
Distinctive title:  ‘Boy wearing a cap’.
It’s not now the depth of winter, yet there
Is evidently a chill in the air;
People are bundled; the boy wears a coat,
Knee-length socks and—is he wearing a tie?
The light strikes his cap and the head of the
Woman—his mother?—beside him; the two
Are in the forefront of the photo, so
Symbolic of the Jews’ travail it is
A source book’s sole scene under  ‘Holocaust’.1
The boy’s cap, coat and socks appear to trace
Him from a home above average means;
Coming dire tests would be the more drastic.

III
He should be playing, as children the world
Round are wont to do, first tries at soccer,
Other games with friends, or with that childlike
Gift of invention, playing some game alone,
Imagining in him a star is born.
School, a field trip, are his normal places
If the boy were treated as a human;
He’s a mere lad, but is not too young for
Home chores, for early signs of giftedness,
With promise in art, music, speech or science
That may in time astound and bless the world,
And at eventide happily gathered
With his family for strength and blessing.

IV
In an instant it is clear to all who
See him that none of the accustomed passages
Of childhood and youth will henceforth be his.
What’s this!  Appallingly his arms are raised—
Universal sign of no resistance to powers that be,
What shame on the all-powerful police state
To coerce a small boy into submission
As if he were a threat to the Third Reich!—
In obvious obedience to shouts
And commands of brutes driving and herding
A mélange of Jews: men, women, aged,
Infirm, babes-in-arms, youth, children like the
Boy so deeply printed in my mind’s eye,
These are judged as a plague, Untermenschen,2
Root of all evils afflicting the Nazi state.
Any trying to escape risk instant death;
They are corralled like brigands, thus the guards
Are armed and ready; in time the exhausted,
Sick and feeble will be shot where they fall.

V
Likely the boy’s mother is beside him,
She too is raising a hand, her head is turned 
Toward a guard whose rifle is pointed 
At the boy; fear appears to trump anger.
David’s fight with Goliath was easy By this struggle;
David could draw upon
 The whole-hearted support of his fellow
Israelites—the defeat of a mighty
Armed warrior of the feared Philistines
Would resound far and wide to their glory;
Among Gentiles this small boy found no friend,
Only silence, or abetment for their
Tormentors, and his people were utterly
Distraught, thus of little comfort to him;
He was where brutality and terror 
Ruled from the Fuehrer to his least minions.
Questions of Jews’ will to resist evil
Are cheap criticism from secure havens.
The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto,
Sustained for thirty-three days with small arms    
Against hopeless odds, shows profound courage;3
Resistance to terror often mirrors
The best opportunity for success.
Stopping tyranny early demands great
Vigilance but little blood; full grown, the 
Cost of its overthrow is measureless.

VI
Sinister portent of a growing menace,
The infamous Nuremberg Laws fell on
All German Jews like a scourge, constricting
Their livelihoods and lives still more and more,
Dehumanizing, spirit-debasing,
Sapping their wills and hope near to breaking:
Nearly all professions were forbidden Jews,
Severe curbs on education, food, clothing,
With access to theaters, concert halls, parks 
Denied them, forced to wear a yellow star,
Faith-practice restricted, fraught with peril;
Even Jewish holders of the coveted Iron
Cross From the Great War found it availed them nothing,
They were often vilified and attacked,
Emigration more stymied and costly,
Suicides rose sharply as hope was waning; 
Jews, Jews married to Gentiles, those with partial
Jewish lineage, were caught in a grim vise
Ever tightening, taking freedom and life.
Then came an explosion heard round the world.

VII
Kristallnacht, ‘night of broken glass,’ surpassed
All previous pogroms in Jews beaten, 
Seized and sent to concentration camps, and
The number of Jews killed, their synagogues 
Desecrated and burned, businesses and 
Homes robbed and ravaged while police stood by,
The Nazis spread terror and havoc, death
And destruction, across the whole nation.
Wanton as it was, this massive pogrom
Was unleashed by Nazi leaders using
The cause célèbre of a minor official’s
Stark assassination in the German
Embassy in Paris by a young Jew
Over Nazi treatment of his family.
Outrage was piled on outrage when insurance
Payments were confiscated by the state,
And a billion-marks-fine levied on Jews!
Appalled as were many in other nations, 
Outrage evoked by these atrocities
Was soon muted; no nation raised its
Immigration quotas for beleaguered Jews;
Hitler surely observed that concern for
The Jews did not rise to action
In America, as elsewhere, and believed
He could get away with mass murder;
Kristallnacht, ominous cataract of mayhem,
Was prelude to the Nazis’ genocide of Jews.

VIII
The dreaded knock often came in the middle of the 
Night—nefarious deeds bear not the light—
The sickening scene was repeated countless times
In the land of Goethe, Bach, Beethoven
And Handel, later all across Europe.
 (To counter resistance, Hitler ordered the notorious
 ‘Nacht und Nebel,’ the Night and Fog Decree—
Prisoners disappearing without a trace.)4
Nazi toughs have summarily ousted
These decent folk from their loved and last refuge,
Their homes violated, they are forced out
Carrying the clothes on their backs, a few
Cherished photos and other treasures,
Some food, clothing, items thrown in a suitcase,
And little else; they have reason for panic. 

IX
Where is the boy’s father?  Had he a store
Boycotted into ruin, and now scrounging
To meet his family’s necessities?
Was he a teacher forced into factory work?
A lawyer trying to help fellow Jews
When the dreaded SS struck his own home?
Did the husband-father arrive to find
His family gone, his home ransacked and empty,
The neighbors missing, the eerie silence
Broken only by a dog’s forlorn wail?
No chance to escape, would he be taken
To a different ghetto, and like many,
Never to see his family again?
He would need the tongue of Jeremiah
His heart-rending anguish truly to share.

X
The boy, perhaps eight, fights to hold back tears;
The wonder, if his father is missing
At their time of grave peril, and his
Whole world is collapsing, is that this lad
Has not yielded to despair, though his eyes
Reveal a wrenching fear, not of nature’s
Rampaging fury all people rightly dread,
Nor of bodily pain, common to young and old,
But fear of cruelty unlimited, the sine qua non
Of tyrants, which the Creator intended
None should have to fear, now all too real for him;
Far worse—horrendous treatment—was coming that
Would burn Dante’s Inferno into their lives.

XI
The non-descript crowd reaches a railway
Siding, abandoned by all to a bitter fate
 (Swedish envoy Raoul Wallenberg later saved tens of
Thousands of Jews in Hungary from death trains),
Able-bodied, old and young, the sick and infirm, were
Shoved into freight cars, commonly called
‘Forty and Eights’ because they were made to carry forty men
Or eight horses or cattle; but to save on transport,
Often far more than forty were packed in,
Leaving little but standing room, the door slammed
Shut and locked.  With no food or water save
What they had brought, and suffering stifling heat,
Or frigid winter days and nights, with no sanitation,
And the stench of human wastes, for days and nights
That must have seemed interminable, they
Endured claustrophobic conditions locked
In clattering, or idle, rail cars, desperately 
Thirsty and hungry, the sick untended,
Bound they knew not where, with despair
Mounting.  It is not surprising that 
Some did not survive this hellish ordeal.

XII
Yet leaving a transport brought no relief;
Inhumanity continued full bore
In the ghettos which were designed to inflict
Suffering, and to exacerbate many 
Of the most destructive human instincts.
The boy in the iconic photo may have been
Ghettoized while the killing apparatus underwent
Experimentation and expansion, as Auschwitz-
Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor and other death
Factories began to implement the planned genocide.
Under the Nazis, ghetto life was barbaric at best:
Even swine are fattened for killing, but here it was
Slow death by starvation, many wracked by disease
Without drugs, and forced labor took a harsh toll;
They commonly felt abandoned by man and God,
Helpless, their cries unheard, their souls
Cauterized by anguish too deep for tears,
Their lives ever wretched by over-crowding,
Hunger, and death-lists that pitted Jew against Jew;
Prisoned, trapped, and marked for the impending
Diabolical ‘Final Solution’—
They were in the Nazi ‘kingdom of death’.5

XIII
If Auschwitz became the destination
Of mother and son of this
Holocaust Image, with customary cruelty and indifference
A Death’s Head SS officer likely separated them,
While inmates played incongruous tunes from
The Merry Widow and Tales of Hoffman,6
Sending the mother for forced labor, and
The boy, probably judged unfit for work,
Would be sent directly to the gas chamber;
If the mother too was sent for gassing
She was made to strip, head shaved (a Jewess’
Hair had worth—to these ghouls she was worthless),
Forced with others by police with whips, clubs
Or guns to their last breathing place on earth,
With a final deception of  ‘showers’
Quickly turned to deadly cyanide fumes.
Death was not so quick: the ghastly, screaming,
Futile struggle with several thousand of the 
Damned to breathe, and claw their way out,
Variously took ten to thirty minutes—
Then deathly silence.  Lackeys removed rings,
Searched body cavities for precious stones,
And yanked gold from the teeth of corpses7
Before the bodies were hauled to ovens.

XIV
While the ‘Image’s’ boyish picture has been seen
By millions, no name has yet come to light;
Holocaust authorities believe him to be Polish,
Unknown by name yet known the world over.
Might the capped boy have opened new vistas
In astronomy, enriched our music heritage,
Gifted humanity with inspired writing,
 Or merely been a person decent, honest and
Caring, on whom the whole world depends?8

XV
Never are humans so vile as when they
Treat a little one cruelly; surely those who
Knowingly mistreat a defenseless child
Face a judgment beyond imagining;
Better for such persons not to be born.
Rachel is still weeping for her children,
And not Rachel alone, the anguish weighs
On the hearts of all who know that the boy
With the cap, with hands raised, is our brother
And our son.  How much I owe him and all
Whom he represents only God can say.
Where did I fail him and millions like him?
Silence in the face of hate gives free rein
To evil men and makes us complicit;
Widespread indignation wields great power;
In failure to advocate asylum for Jews,
Was not my silence touched with damnation?
At the Great Assize, what will I say when
The Judge of All asks what I did to succor them?

XVI
A thousand years will not suffice to right
The horrendous crimes against a people
Essentially because of their Abrahamic lineage.
The crimes are not against the Jews (and
Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses) only;
They strike at the human race, bound as one
As surely as the same blood runs through all men.
Where any are treated inhumanely,
And injustice blights body, mind and spirit,
In the name of a holy and just God
Let us overcome evil with good, and undermine
Oppression, striving to bring life and freedom.
A new holocaust can be prevented—
Seeing all bearing the divine image,
And treating all with dignity and worth;
No one can speak and act for the whole world,
But we are responsible for showing
The reconciling way in our own world.  

  1  In the 1994 World Book Encyclopedia (and one of only two Holocaust photos in the 2001 edition).  Both editions cite it as a photo in the Jerusalem Yad Vashem Archives. 

2  Subhumans, as Nazis considered Jews and Slavic peoples, who in Hitler’s view had no right to live, except as slaves of the master race. 

3  Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Himmler (New York: Paperback Library, Inc., 1968), 151.

4  Under this decree, suspected saboteurs and others would vanish without a trace into the night and fog.  Himmler instructed the Gestapo: “An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only by the death penalty or by taking measures which will leave the family and the population uncertain as to the fate of the offender.” To this day it is not known how many thousands disappeared as a result of this draconian decree, which Hitler issued on December 7, 1941.  (www.The History Place—WW II in Europe)

5  Apt phrase of Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).  Chapter Seven title: “The Annihilation Camps: Kingdom of Death”. 

6  William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1960), 970.

7  Jews had been encouraged to bring all their valuables with them for the promised “resettlement.”  The valuables confiscated from the dead were sent to the Reichsbank, where by a secret agreement between Himmler and the bank’s presi-dent, Dr. Walther Funk, they were deposited in an account for the SS.  (Ibid., 973)

8  A wider assumption on a popular Russian saying: “No village can exist without one righteous person—or a town, or a nation

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us