Auschwitz Poem by Colin Ian Jeffery

(Nazi death camp)

In Poland, during Second World War,160 miles
south-west of Warsaw the Nazis built their most notorious
death camp. At one time over ten thousand entered the gas
chambers daily. Not less than three million died there.
Above the main gates ‘Arbeit macht frel' (works makes you
free) . Cruel Nazi joke. Only death made them free.


Chimneys billow white smoke
Ovens fired and ready
Waiting for a train arriving
Cattle wagons packed with Jews.

Orchestra of prisoners
Weep playing Mozart
Performing Nazi scheme
Calming people in the trucks.

Guards with barking snapping dogs
Herd people from the wagons
Shouting for them to hurry
Moving towards the camp.

SS officers wait
With doctors in white coats
Ready to select and to divide
Choosing who lives and who dies.

Fit and strong, mostly men live
Worked until they drop
Then sent to the gas chambers
Bodies then loaded into ovens.

Sick, weak, elderly and children
Sent directly to the showers
Told to strip to be deloused and bathed
Not knowing it the killing place.

Some women try hiding children
Under clothes hanging on pegs
But prisoners' The Kommando‘
Search clothing supervised by SS.

Standing naked and embarrassed
Shower doors are closed
Gas hisses through a ceiling vent
Panicking they scream in terror.

Choking gas overcomes them
As they fight desperately for air
Building a human pyramid
Almost reaching to the ceiling.

When the doors are open
The bodies are removed
By prisoners ‘The Kommando'
Gold teeth and rings removed.

Death took ten minutes
Bodies are carried into lifts
Fed into ovens
Chimney smoke turning black.

The Kommando work quickly
With another train coming
Cattle wagons packed with Jews
Ready for selection on who lives or dies.