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You may not be a Jew, and so the Holocaust
Means next to nothing in your mind—the human cost.
In your mind, they had to have done something to bring
This all about, which would explain most everything.
And, since you were not, are not, personally involved
You won’t concern yourself in seeing it resolved.
When asked about it, you most properly display
Concern and empathy in a convincing way,
But you can just as easily dismiss it all,
The Holocaust, in any way, is not your call,

It’s time you took another look at how you feel.
It’s time you came to grips with what was ghastly real.
For long before the Final Solution came about
The persecutions were afoot, without a doubt.
The targeted, however, were the likes of you;
Incarcerated for no reason but one’s view.
It’s also good to know when all of this began—
Like 1937, when they unveiled the plan.
If you were viewed to be, in some way, dissident;
Or low IQ, or Gypsy…in a camp you went.

The first of these was Buchenwald, a large convex,
Located inside Germany, for either sex.
The point to make clear here is its initial size—
The numbers it would hold not easy to disguise.
For everything about it a sense of permanency,
So it portrayed a criteria not hard to see.
So even law-abiding citizens could sense
The threat of being sent there, minus evidence.
So think about its open practice and intent
Where civil rights of any kind not evident.
So think of Buchenwald with personal concern,
Of which a common citizen, like you, must learn.

© Richard Williams

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