Thursday, January 27, 2005

In Memoriam: Auschwitz

There is much written, movingly, on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Here in tribute I reproduce a poem by Primo Levi, the outstanding voice of the survivors.

Shema
Primo Levi
You who live secure

In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

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