Auschwitz - Oswiecim lyrics

On a penetrating misty morning

In silent somber stillness

Stand foreboding ordered edifices

Deteriorating with time unrelenting

A testiment to ordered efficiency

To the barbarism that is man

The fate of injustice is transience

A tragedy to the merits of men

The earth and its forms

Hold the blood and the tears

She shows as if poisoned

To they who might see, might feel

They who weep knowingly

Childrens' nightmares made real

Every age feeling their terror

Monsters, all were mere men

Through those imposing gates

Passed one-way's doomed souls

Thousands in fear, selected

Culled for labor, or death

Two sides, both groups destined

To share their final fate

Those who lived a little longer

Suffering more, fleeting entities

Piles of personal items collected

Material possessions surrendered

The temporal gives way to intangible

Tormented mortal, to muted spiritual

Carloads of condemned, massed genocide

False security as society's drones

Justice shared, but not at all equal

Great men were made doomed men

Choking in a haze of Zyklon B

Those blotched stained walls

Cold concrete darkened halls

Echoing ever on, cries then gasps

All that could not do hard labor

Now soundless, only disbelief

That civilized men exterminated

Not only others, but themselves

Cell blocks, pock-marked walls

Riddled by rounds of squads

Their vollies, their breath ceased

Wood plank beds tight and small

No comfort for brittle bones

That convey finally to hell's door

A fiery end here on earth

An abeyance, this vigilant sentry

A spectral reality unresolved

Faces and names numberless

Sacrificial victims of insanity

Unveiled by the liberation

That came far too late

An unimagined numbed salvation

The putrid smoke wafted above

Its fumes have all but faded

But a stench remains still

It is an essence eternal - fetid

Flowers found, arrayed memorials

Unable to conceal foul deeds

Nature's awe, outlasts all

Shouted orders once condemned so many

Now quelled by time's river

An age that spewed lies and contempt

Must not be released again

For blame cannot wash it away

The hatred can only be prolonged

Its name remains destruction

Long after the blood has gone

Those brands have vanished now

Their incessant nightmares extinguished

A generation has quietly slipped off

Tatooed numbers faded, and wiped away

Dispersed beyond the towering walls

Concentration, extermination, cremation

Selection meant execution

Martyrdom in the mayhem

Mass graves, a lasting legacy

Empty suitcases and empty hopes

Sorrow's strength still all-consuming

Compassion's claim ever being

Unable to understand the magnitude

The crimes of men upon men

How could this have been?

Denial will not erase the truth

None must forget or understand

So an old iron clad lie cannot die

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