Remember Me

In what twisted world could this ever be okay? That is Auschwitz, a world turned upside down.

The history books tell us that: In Auschwitz-Birkenau, people were gassed. But there is so much more terror to that than anyone can imagine. Thousands of people, were herded off the cattle carriages, and selected. Women, the elderly and children under 14 were sent immediately to the gas chambers. They were at the end of the line, literally and metaphorically. They were told to strip and told to remember where they had hung their clothes as they would need to come back and find them. They were then pushed into the chamber and an SS officer would pour a pesticide through a hole in the roof, he would wait 20 minutes, just to check they were all dead. The bodies would then be moved, by other prisoners, and burned in the Crematorium, or in a pile in the forest. Before this, all useable parts were taken off them, such as teeth and hair. Hair was used to make clothes and insulator for submarines. This wasn’t just extermination! This was industrial and profitable mass murder. This was the Holocaust. These wonderful people with ambition, potential and families, were reduced to nothing but numbers and bodies. Everything was burned in the end.

And so, dear reader, I do not tell you this just to scare and sicken you, but to warn you. The people who suffered were real people, not just faceless individuals, or number and figures. But what is worse still is that so were the perpetrators. They too were real people, not psychopathic killing machines. That is why I warn you, dear reader. Be just a little kinder, a little more tolerant, a little more aware. I beg you, from the depths of my heart, to visit this horrific place, to tell these difficult stories, so that these atrocities never happen again.

So, I leave you with this, dear reader, as written on the memorial in Auschwitz - Birkenau.

‘For ever let this place be a cry of despair, and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million, men, women, and children, manly Jews, from various countries of Europe.’

Yours Sincerely, Emily

Remember me, Since you won’t remember what I was like when I was free.

You won’t remember my childhood fun, You’ll remember the first time I held a gun. You won’t remember my love for Keats, You’ll remember the melody of the forever fading beats. You won’t remember that ‘Heard melodies are sweet, but unheard ones are sweeter’, You’ll remember how they stabbed us back metre by metre, You won’t remember my students laughing in May 1913, You’ll remember the vast valley of ashes that was seen, You won’t remember my sunny smile, You’ll remember my military style, You won’t remember the cherry blossom I stood beneath when I was first kissed, You’ll remember who was caught and who was missed, You won’t remember they used to be my friends, You’ll remember how it all had to end.

You’ll remember I fought for what I thought was right, You’ll remember we put up a bloody fight, You’ll remember our pride and honour that shone in our eyes, But will you remember what lay beneath the disguise?

Will you remember the boy that didn’t come home? Will you remember his mother waiting to brush her boys hair with the brittle comb? Will you remember that I made it? Will you remember my terror which was dismissed as a passing fit? Will you remember the stagnant smell of crisp gunpowder trickle into our nose? Will you remember all we wished for was to delay the arrival of the blood rose? Will you remember that although I came back, my heart belongs to the Battle of the Somme? Will you remember where I came from?

Will you remember me or simply my name chiseled on a slab of forgotten rock? Will you remember my love bid me farewell in her delicate white frock? Will you remember how she didn’t care about peace? Will you remember she only wanted me back in one piece? Will you remember she cursed every damn soldier, politician and leader? Will you remember her idea of peace was us with sweet Emily beneath our Cedar?

You’ll remember my name. You’ll remember my honour like a forever glowing flame. You’ll remember the deafening glory of the trombones. But you won’t remember those who weren’t called to the phone. And you won’t remember the sacrifice I made for you to be free. I didn’t sacrifice pride, honour or blood, I sacrificed the memory of me.

K Pepper, Lower Sixth