Silence
I was ten when my father first took me to see Belsen.
I remember the snow on the ground,
The dreadful cold,
The bone-numbing wind that moaned
across its vast emptiness.
Like my belief, my camera failed;
It had frozen in my hands.
Still, if I close my eyes,
I can see the camp as clear as day;
The ovens nothing more now than traced lines in the snow;
Cold-shrouded concrete mounds
Still bear witness to those beneath, conveniently divided
into units of
fifty thousand.
“Here lie the bodies of...
here lie the bodies...
here lie the bodies”.
My father told me that since the war, no bird had ever sung there.
I stood with my father in the perfect, terrible silence.
He held my hand.
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