Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Rose HERE at her blog, Imagine the Possibilities. Thank you for hosting, Rose.
Take the blinders from your vision,
take the padding from your ears,
and confess you've heard me crying,
and admit you've seen my tears.
MAYA ANGELOU, Excerpt from her poem, "Equality."
After posting a villanelle last week I wrote a few more. I became familiar with the form, and found it useful to try again. But there were none that I liked enough to share this week. Que lastima!
I know I’m not the only Poetry Friday blogger who watched the Ken Burns documentary on America and the Holocaust. It’s well worth the time and I hope everyone sees it, especially kids old enough to understand. Watch it Here on PBS. I know more about America’s response to Nazi Germany.
First of all, Hitler used our Jim Crow South and the treatment of Native Americans as guidance on what to do about the Jews. Though the killing of thousands appeared in newspapers, readers thought it was a lie. And that was a convenient belief for the many just didn’t want to help Jews.
What comes to mind when we think about the Holocaust? Most Americans think of death in gas chambers. However, that was just one creative and efficient method used. There were endless methods used to murder thousands and thousands of Jewish men, women and little children. Guns, being thrown from heights, starvation, exhaustion, exposure. One writer said Nazi methods and depravity was “bottomless.”
Ken Burns shows us the details of how Nazi thinking evolved and the genocide was organized. Many Americans eventually, over several years, came to believe the murdering was really happening, but by 1944, it was too late for the four million had already been killed.
Because of the racism of members in Congress and the State Department, America didn’t help Jews for a long time, though, near the end, heroic individuals supported by our government stepped up to smuggle thousands of Jews out of Europe. Of course, we owe a debt to the soldiers who fought in the war.
I learned Charles Lindbergh, once an American hero to many, who in the 1940’s was eventually recognized as a Nazi sympathizer, created a slogan, “America First.”
Years later, in 2016, many probably might have thought that slogan was new, not a recycled, stale, failed boxcar to a dark chapter of our past.
I offer this poem today.
A HUMAN GALAXY Our bodies, made of cells are like constellations like the one who wears a belt, another dipping water, and others all conjured from stars. While we, swirl together sharing our humanity in our smaller and fragile universe. © Janice Scully 2022
Our children need to understand about white supremacy, Hitler and how all groups that are labeled “others” are treated. If they don’t, a Holocaust could happen again.
I am so grateful for our democracy and the efforts made by our President and others to keep it.
Thank you for reading! I am looking forward to a good weekend and hope you will have one too.
Thank you, Rose, for hosting Poetry Friday!
What is Poetry Friday? Look Here.
Thank you for the information about the Ken Burns documantary. I will make plans to watch it. Your poem captures the interconnectedness of humanity so well, swirling together like stars in the universe.
Janice, thank you for offering the link for the Ken Burns documentary that I will be sure to watch. Two of my dear friends escapes Nazism in France during WWII. This is a subject that I never understood how mankind could be so inhumane to others either through atrocities, ignorance, or uncaring. Your poem is inspiring as it aims to understand shared humanity. I love the backdrop of the constellations in the sky surrounding the universe.
Yes, I watched and knew some of it from growing up with family members who fought. My father was killed in the war, then later, my mother re-married and my stepfather had been in the Army Corps of Engineers, and was one of the first to enter Dachau. He didn’t tell much of what he saw but because of his experience, he made sure we all knew to fight for the rights of everyone. Your poem brings such beauty to humanity, Janice, “while we swirl together”, all with the same needs and wishes for our lives. Thank you!
Yes, you do have connections to the war! I don’t know anyone else whose Dad was killed in World War ll, but there were many. And your step-father’s experience. Powerful to hear about.
A difficult topic, but so necessary. Thanks for your poem and info about the Burns documentary, which I’ll definitely have to watch. I agree that we could witness another holocaust in our lifetimes.
I like your poem Janice and especially the closing stanza. I hope we can swirl together, for we have a very ” fragile universe.” I wish the Ken Burns documentary would somehow reach the hearts and open minds of those who believe the holocaust never happened… thanks for sharing all!
Janice, Thank you for the reminder about the documentary. I haven’t watched it yet, but I definitely will. Thanks for sharing your poem! I love “swirl together/sharing our humanity.”
Thank you for speaking up, Janice. It’s hard not to fear for our future – our country’s, our children’s– when we are witnessing so much rage and vitriol these days. Not only what we teach, but how we teach is critical.
Great post, Janice. Have you read Candace Fleming’s “The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh”? It is a YA non-fiction which I read because anything Candace writes is a masterclass in writing. I was shocked, sickened, and saddened by what I learned. He is not someone to hold up as a role model for anyone in any way, much like some of the people currently on the national stage. You should check it out if you haven’t already.
Janice, thanks for your poem and for shining a light on Burns’s latest documentary. My husband has watched but I haven’t yet had a chance. As you noted, it’s important that we know our history and recognize when it is or could be happening again.