You Can Not Imagine
"Eyes" by Elly Draganov
“You Can Not Imagine” by Annalise Vezina
I have seen horrible things.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
Train cars pulling up,
one hundred people
in each car.
They are treated like cattle:
no seats, no ventilation,
no food, no water,
no light,
no proper place to relieve oneself.
When people pour out
onto the ramp,
they are starved.
They are tired.
They are barely hanging on to life.
Some have no life left.
They are tossed to the side,
like the belongings of everyone else,
and taken away.
The young, the old,
the sick, the weak.
None are spared a moment of mercy.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
Families torn apart:
parents, siblings,
aunts, uncles,
grandparents,
cousins.
Without a chance to
say goodbye.
Those who shall live
to one side.
Those who shall die
to another.
The living are stripped
of everything they have:
jewelry,
clothes,
hair,
identity.
They are completely empty,
no longer human beings.
Those sentenced to death
walk to the gas chambers
together,
unaware of
their fate.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
The guards do not view
the prisoners as humans.
The prisoners are objects
to be used,
discarded,
disposed of.
Even the people’s possessions
have more value
then they do:
shoes can be repurposed,
hair can be reused,
precious metals can be remelted.
All of these things
have a second chance.
Yet the people
who owned these things
do not.
This life is the only one they have.
And so many are gone.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
People worked to death.
People starved.
People sleeping without
any mattress, six to a bed
(if you can even call it that).
People full of sickness
and hopelessness.
People going missing
every day,
only to be turned to ash.
The beatings,
the deprivation,
the rape,
the starvation,
the loneliness,
the death,
all of it I witnessed.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
People ordered
to the gas chambers,
forced to remove
all clothes and valuables,
crammed into a room
with a hundred people.
And just like that,
millions of lives.
Gone.
I am the barbed wire
that covered the camps.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
And so have
Kurt Pauly,
Jill Pauly,
Estelle Laughlin,
Sylvia Rozines,
Fritz Gluckstein,
Alfred Traum,
Allan Firestone,
Louis De Groot,
Halina Yasharoff Peabody,
Peter Gorog,
Josiane Traum,
Dora Klayman,
Henry Weil,
Albert Garih,
Al Munzer,
Rita Rubinstein,
Gideon Frieder,
George Pick,
Agi Geva,
Susan Darvas,
Arye Ephrath,
Ralph Berets,
Esther Starobin,
Rae Goldfarb,
Nat Shaffir,
Harry Markowicz,
Julie Keefer,
Anna Grosz,
Joël Nommick,
Rose-Helene Spreiregen,
Manny Mandel,
Steve Fenves,
Margit Meissner,
Sam Ponczak,
David Bayer,
Susan Warsinger,
Irene Weiss,
Frank Liebermann,
Peter Feigl,
Marcel Drimer,
Josiane Traum,
and millions of others
all across Europe
in camps,
ghettos,
cities,
towns,
homes.
For millions, there was
no escape.
No way to survive.
Millions of lives.
Gone.
They have experienced
unspeakable, unfathomable things.
Things you can not imagine.
I am the barbed wire
that covered the camps.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
I was created to keep cattle
enclosed in pastures,
not to keep humans
confined in hell.
I am the barbed wire
that covered the camps.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
From 1933 to 1945,
I was used to
imprison,
enslave,
dehumanize,
destroy,
starve,
beat,
kill.
Yet that was not
my design.
I am the barbed wire
that covered the camps.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
The Nazis did not
contemplate
or ponder
their disregard
for human life.
Nor the murder,
abuse,
rape,
separation,
dehumanization,
demolishment
they committed.
They were murdering
people with
souls,
dreams,
families,
ambitions,
lives.
They ended them
in an instant.
Millions of lives.
Gone.
I have seen things
you can not imagine.
“The patrol leader called in by radio and said that we have come across something, and we’re not sure what it is. It’s a big prison of some kind and there are people running all over - sick, dying, starved people. You can’t imagine it. Things like that don’t happen.” ~Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1945, when American troops liberated Nazi concentration camps
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, persecution and annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi Party and its collaborators from 1933 to 1945. While Jews were the primary victims, the Nazis also targeted Poles, homosexuals, the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, and anyone who went against their ideology.
“You can’t imagine it. Things like that don’t happen.”
“Eyes II” by Elly Draganov
