Holocaust Memorial Day in Stamford - poetry reading by Stamford Poet Laureate Caroline Avnit
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00:00insight. Weak limbed and fatigued they march, the line dragging on through dust and pain,
00:08smoke rising from Auschwitz crematoria, where you'd never see your parents again. You wore
00:14your number on your forearm, the yellow star marking your life as a Jew, herded like animals
00:21into the cattle car, knowing no one was coming to save you. The blood of the innocent spilt like
00:29water bled from young lives cut desperately short, immobilized by hunger you sorely comply,
00:37frozen with fear that you'd be caught. The last you saw her was in the cramped carriage where
00:43the brave young doctor would lead. Young men took their turn standing as those sitting were most in
00:50need. Did you peer through the gaps in the slats? Did you try and call out to safety?
00:57As days drew into cold nights of exhaustion, in bartered sleep, did you dream of being free?
01:05As the cattle car's journey nears an end, a young mother screams her baby is dead. The rabbi
01:11wraps the little body in his prayer shawl, no empty words of comfort, just tears shed.
01:19There is no time past that's great enough, no revenge can pay the price of pain,
01:25nor forgiveness heals such deep wounds, but the world bears the blood and shame.
01:32Schemes of such nefarious men whose hearts so hardened by hate change the course of many a
01:39lifespan, tempted by power, betrayed by fate. For all the souls so brutally murdered, we cry out
01:48until the end of our days, have we learned from our past mistakes? Will we ever change our ways?