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Auschwitz's Daughter
In her family’s garden, she always noticed a row of scarecrows.
In the wind, their thin bodies dressed in faded grey and white,
swayed like the flowers to which they tended.
To her, their small grey home was a palace,
and her father, dressed in a sharp grey suit that matched, was a king.
He would invite her into his lap as he did his work; today,
he beckoning to a pile of rings.
Some were dull, plain,
others newly glistened.
She had never seen so many at once. Today it was rings,
but before it had been shoes, suitcases, before that,
piles and piles of papers.
She had no idea where so many rings could come from,
so she curiously asked her father,
“Papa, these look like the ring you gave mama, when you married her,
before I was born, because you loved her, but why are there
so many?”
He chuckled, pulled his young daughter tighter in and said,
“My precious daughter, it does not matter where are they are from,
The ONE I gave your mother was a sign of great love,
Just think of all the love I have for you if I am showing you these.”
And this answer satisfied he and s he curled deeper into his lap.
From the window behind their backs, a smokestack.
Rings of eerie smoke, rising into the sky.
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What makes genocide studies interesting to me is that while it is easy to write off Nazis as 'monsters', they were completely human. I've read stories of the children of Nazi generals and how they lived happy lives with parents they saw as heroes, as most children see their mothers and fathers.