Auschwitz's Orchestra Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Auschwitz was evacuated on 18 January 1945. In 2009 I visited the camp with my son Morven. (A mitochondrial DNA test showed a Jewish strand in our family)

If you walk on the paths round Auschwitz, the Holocaust
Has laid grey dust of the thousands, Shoah's human cost

The finest musicians played as genocide's backdrop here
When the trains arrived, bringing victims from far and near

The orchestra performed as folk marched to hard labour
Those shot or beaten to death, propped up on chairs to savour
The Best Time of Life (Die schönste Zeit des Lebens)
Or Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, perfect for harsh seasons

For the guards, Music Has Never Been So Beautiful was often requested
As Musselmen swayed under the sun, whom God had not protected.

Prisoners limped on automaton legs in battered shoes
Birkenau's SS Kramer wept at Schubert, gassed 24,000 Jews

Musicians performed for Rudolf Höss, at home
Grieg, Schumann, and Mozart, for the man with the heart of stone

Erika Rothschild recalled being driven from the cattle cars in dozens
As the band played Polish, Czech, or folk music, for strangers and cousins
One person was driven to camp, the other was fed to the ovens.

In a minor key, strung out doloroso, the sighing of starved souls dying
The terror of guard dogs snarling, the echoes of scourged men sighing

The lamentation of prisoners stripped
Of humanity, hope and name
The kaddish sung in bitterness and pain,
Where from grey skies the ashes of corpses rain