Poem for an unborn kinship

Written for the occasion of the

International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust 

27th January 2020

 

Poem for an unborn kinship

1.

We remember

2.

Past tense, look ahead!

Your favourite expression, dad

But, how do I look ahead

if I cannot look around?

Where do I go

if I cannot know the past?

Papa,

how to live life?

3.

Trains, tracks, chimneys

Mozes, Betsie

Grey clouds, black smoke

Philip, Rosalien, Elisabeth

Arbeit Macht Frei

Are you free?

 

4.

I never got to know you

I arrived when you already left 

WWII

Second World War

Holocaust

Meant,

we would never meet

Meant,

one day, I would be

 

5.

We recite

Nimble candlelight,

dark silence

Rows of people

gather

We remember

Screenshot 2020-01-26 at 11.46.09.png

My dad and his siblings. My dad escaped deportation camp Westerbork, in the west of The Netherlands. His brother, his sisters and his parents were all killed in Auschwitz and Sobibor.