Soon after liberation, surviving children of the Auschwitz camp walk out of the children’s barracks. Poland, after January 27, 1945.
— United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
I study this photograph,
and so it begins.
Seventy-three Years Later.
The war comes to a devastating conclusion.
The discoveries unfold:
Eyewitness encounters with the most horrific crime in the history of the world.
Battle-hardened tough guys cry.
They stomp their feet in rage, and get sick,
but the lost are lost.
The Survivors ‘carry on’.
The Soldiers ‘carry on’.
Some will be lost for the rest of their lives.
Now, it is Seventy-plus Years.
But it is not over,
because ‘closure’ is a myth,
and seven decades is but a blur.
The barracks door opens slowly. New tracks form in the snow
but how is life supposed to go on?
And now for the rest of humanity-
Just what have we learned,
Or have we just allowed ourselves to forget?
Is it even important, for us to stop and think
about snowflakes on little boys?
*****
-m.a.rozell-
See the Altantic’s photo essay here.
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Matthew Rozell is a teacher who has studied at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority. His second book, A Train Near Magdeburg, is on teaching and remembering the Holocaust.
Teaching History Matters 