NEVER FORGET
By Tawnysha Lynch
The past and the future intertwined as two figures walked hand in hand
in the distance. The taller of the two was an elderly woman holding
tightly to the hand of her granddaughter. They both sauntered silently
along the abandoned train tracks that had not been used for decades. A
cold, voiceless wind drifted eerily over the phantom tracks with a
haunted past.
“Faded golden stars glow
Under the dying sun
Doomed souls board
One by one
Each forming human rows
By the boxcar’s window
Old next to young
Until the task is done
And faces gaze with woe
At where the train tracks lead
Wondering if they will die or live
Or surrender or fight.
The Lord’s flock is carried
Away bound and captive
Like phantom whispers in the night” murmured the grandmother.
The girl listened intently to the ghostly memories. The grandmother’s
eyes misted slightly as she scanned the
outline of the intimidating gate, remembering.
“Men open the train’s heavy doors
And the light blinds my eyes.
I hear foreign commands nearby
In a tongue I’ve not heard before.
I hear the ovens’ distant roar
As ashes rain from the red sky.
The gate reads, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei.’
I am chilled to the very core.
I realize where we have been brought
As the breath in my chest is caught.
‘Work makes you free,’ the entrance
mocks
Knowing we can’t flee where we walk.
Here we are led, victims of hate
To death’s entrance at Auschwitz’s
gates,” the woman whispered
to the girl.
“Tell me what you see, Grandma,” the
girl said softly, “so that I can see it, too.” The woman looked at her
with heartbreak etched across her face.
“Come with me and I’ll show you,” the grandmother faintly replied as
they both entered the gate. The girl
curiously followed her, and then stopped when she saw snowflakes falling
from the dark skies. She reached out her hand and caught a few flecks,
but instead of melting in her hand, pecks remained as phantom reminders
between her fingers. The girl gasped, but instead of crisp, fresh air,
she scented the burning flesh of her people.
Confused, the girl rushed to
join her grandmother further down the spectral path and clutched her
arm. The grandmother’s voice caused her to look ahead. She saw several
people strolling across the camp,
conversing noiselessly. As the girl continued to stare, the people
transformed into living skeletons dressed in striped prison rags bearing
the faded yellow star of a Jew. The anguished prisoners’ sunken eyes
stared at the girl as she shuddered with dismay.
The sojourners next entered a narrow
building filled with cluttered rows of feeble, wooden bunks that lined
the room’s dirty walls.
“Jehovah, 0 Lord, I thank you today
For all the dysentery and the lice.
They keep the SS officers away.
I thank you for the little rats and
mice.
They keep me company when friends are
gone.
Thank you for the thirst and gnawing
hunger
So I can think of these things at the
dawn
Instead of my children torn asunder.
Thank you for the hard work and cruel
beatings.
They break my body, but strengthen my
soul.
Thank you for the sounds of death and
weeping.
They remind me that I’ve escaped
death’s toll.
You have given me life, the greatest
gift.
Jehovah, 0 Lord, I thank you for this,”
the woman prayed through trembling words.
The girl listened attentively as she
caressed the splintered wood of the old bunks. Though the bunks were
empty, the girl looked and saw hundreds of bony, louse-ridden prisoners
crammed together, dreaming of lost freedom. The girl’s eyes watched
these poor souls whimpering in their sleep until bloodcurdling screams
filled the air. The girl peered around, but could not find the source of
the horrible sound.
“Where is it coming from?”
the girl asked her grandmother with a shiver. The older woman’s eyes
flickered slightly. “You hear it, too?”
A young woman dressed in prisoner’s rags
emerged next to the girl and took her hand.
“Come with me, child. I’ll show you,”
said the prisoner through gaunt lips, famished from months of hunger.
The girl turned to take her grandmother
along, but she had disappeared. Reluctantly, the girl followed the guide
to another building and they both entered a large room with bare walls.
The room suddenly began to fill with elderly men and women as nervous
chatter enveloped the atmosphere. Mothers, shepherding their distraught
lambs, pressed in on all sides. Undressing frantically, the young
children desperately clung to their mothers. Poison gas began to hiss
loudly as their worried faces became distorted. Shrieking filled the
air. The Jews began to claw at the locked doors, ululating as their
naked bodies writhed in pain. In an instant, their terrified faces
blackened as their doomed bodies fell. The chamber became a sea of ashen
bodies whose faces vacantly stared with unseeing eyes. The petrified
children now heaped on the ground, their mouths agape for one last cry.
Suddenly the lamenting stopped and the mounds of corpses faded.
“Why?” the girl cried, clutching the
young woman’s bony hand.
She was answered with only a macabre
silence.
In the next room, ovens lined the walls.
Amid the placid silence, a grieving wind embraced the little girl. Its’
hands touched her gently as she felt a wraithlike breath on her neck.
The girl heard phantasmal voices speaking in vaporous tones as the ovens
began to roar with fire. She froze as the ghoulish words came to life.
“My journey ends and I see hot flames
Consuming corpses, broken and maimed.
I am thrown in the ovens screaming,
Choking, gasping, barely breathing.
Smoking hands reach for the door,
Begging not to die forevermore.
My hands stretch and reach then
slowly wane
As my body shrivels in the flames.
My ebbing voice cries through thick
smoke
Then fades away like a spectral
ghost.
I die with the fire as my tombstone
Completely and utterly alone,”
uttered the vanquished spirits.
Instantly, the bodies vanished as the
oven doors slammed. The silenced essence of men remained in the
untouched ashes, their homeless bodies forever entombed in exile. The
girl realized that she and the prisoner were alone.
Outside, the girl gazed at the chimneys on the roof. They no longer
billowed with red smoke nor rained ashes, but were quiet and still. The
girl took the prisoner’s hand and they both began to move along the path
that surrounded the camp. The wind’s icy fingers clutched them as they
walked, ushering them across the cursed ground. Forlorn watchtowers in
the middle of each wall that once witnessed tragedy were now empty. The
hunched fence, now rusting, stood robbed of its killing power. Twitching
bodies that once hung on its electrified wires were now gone.
Past the fence, they approached large pits replete with dirt and sand.
As the anguished wind howled mournfully, the gir1’s saddened eves
scanned the vast grave. She saw families being murdered and cast in the gaping pits as gunfire
and pleading filled her ears. Closing her eyes, she began to whisper the
mourner’s Kaddish. Images of prisoners being whipped and dogs ripping
apart those who refused execution plagued her thoughts as she uttered
the Hebrew prayer. The prisoner began to echo the familiar words and
together, they created a soft chorus of hushed utterances. When they had
finished, the girl took the Haftling’s hand.
“You see pictures of our faces
In the Hall of Remembrance.
You see our books, clothes, shoes,
and hair
In the Holocaust museums.
You hear our prayers to Jehovah
In the ghetto’s old synagogues.
You hear our loud, desperate cries
On footage of the gas chambers.
You sense our ghostly presence
In the bunks of the death camps.
You see our plastic limbs and glasses
Which we left behind.
You scent our sweet, smoky ashes
In the dark crematoriums.
You grasp the tall, barbed wire
fences
That separated us from life.
Do not forget these things you saw,
But teach them to others
Because you are my witness," sighed the prisoner.
The girl empathetically embraced the woman. When they pulled apart, the
escort became her grandmother. A tear rolled down the girl’s cheek.
“I understand, the girl said faintly.
Hand in hand, they headed down the path leading to the gate and walked
out the entrance of Auschwitz.
“Never forget.’’ the grandmother pleaded under her breath
I will he your witness,’’ the girl vowed.
"With wistful eyes, I observe this place
Seeing things of the past
This place being as I left it
With an echo of remembrance,” murmured the grandmother in a
reflective sonance.
As they journeyed side by side down the train tracks, the lamenting wind
carrying the voices of a million souls blew faintly crying. “Never
forget.”