Where History Hangs its Head OR S-H-A-M-E, Ghosts of Past-Present-Future
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
[Update April 26th 2018: This is not a new poem but one that was inadvertently deleted and which I feel deserves to be read. Some people consider the classic villanelle form dated, even irrelevant to modern life. Well, we must agree to differ.
In my experience, its use of repeated lines (as with any repetition) helps the reader to remember the poem; remembering, in turn, invites further thought. Encouraging any audience to think on about whatever he or she is saying has to be (surely?) what motivates any author of any art form.] RNT
[Update April 22, 2017: Tragically, history - like the worst of human nature - has a nasty habit of repeating itself: http://www.newnownext.com/cnn-chechnya-gay-concentration-camps/04/2017/
Now, January 27th marks Holocaust Memorial Day when the world, as always on that day, rightly remembers the horrors of the Nazi death camps. In April (23rd/24th)Yom HaShoah commemorates the six million + Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Too often, though, I hear people gloss over the fact that millions of non-Jews suffered the same tragedy.
“Although the term Holocaust victims generally refers to the victims of a systematic genocide of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany, the Nazis also murdered a large number of non-Jewish people who were considered subhuman (Untermenschen) or undesirable. Non-Jewish (gentile) victims of the Holocaust included Slavs (e.g. Russians, Poles, Ukrainians and Serbs), Romanis (gypsies), lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) individuals;] the mentally or physically disabled; Soviet POWs, Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses,] Spanish Republicans, Freemasons, people of color (especially the Afro-German Mischlinge, called "Rhineland Bastards" by Hitler and the Nazi regime); the Deaf, leftists, Communists, trade unionists, social democrats, socialists, anarchists, and every other minority or dissident not considered Aryan (Herrenvolk, or part of the "master race") Taking into account all of the victims of persecution, the Nazis systematically killed an estimated six million Jews and an additional 11 million people during the war.” - Wikipedia.
Once, on Holocaust Memorial Day, at the public library where I was working, staff created a ‘Holocaust Tree’ and anyone could (as many did) tie a personal message or comment to its branches. Before I went to lunch, I noticed that someone had written, ‘Remembering all the gay people who perished in the death camps.’ By the time I returned from lunch, it had been removed. As a poet who also happens to be gay, I was having none of that, and replaced it with the same message. It was a busy day, though, and I did not see it removed a second time. Needless to say, I replaced it, and no one removed it again.
We must not forget them, those victims, none of them, nor should we (ever) forget that history is a continuum; we must guard against its repeating itself, wherever, and in whatever shape or form, as best we can…speak up and act, not bury our heads in the Politics of Convenience and turn a blind eye, as so many did with The Holocaust.
Nazism was a terrible thing. It is one of the 21st century's greater tragedies that right wing extremism worldwide continues to grow while actively, often violently expressing its prejudices against others - anti-semitism, homophobia, racism ... Even so, wherever the body may be silenced, be sure the free mind-body-spirit of love and peace will shout all the louder down the Corridors of Time ... in the perennial hope that certain people may yet start listening.
This poem is a villanelle/
WHERE HISTORY HANGS ITS HEAD or S-H-A-M-E, GHOSTS OF PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE
For Jews, Slavs and others, no pity
shown the victims of Nazi genocide;
roll call for a sickening inhumanity
For their cultural-religious identity,
thousands in the gas chambers died;
for Jews, Slavs and others, no pity
Same sex lovers corrupting Society
(cried Nazis targeting us with pride);
roll call for a sickening inhumanity
Roma, too, targets of a Nazi bigotry
for which so many suffered and died;
for Jews, Slavs and others ... no pity
An indelible blot on pages of history
(nor Earth Mother 's tears ever dried)
roll call for a sickening inhumanity
Holocaust, haunting human memory
(no want of inhuman acts worldwide);
for Jews, Slavs and others, no pity;
roll call for a sickening inhumanity
Copyright R. N. Taber 2016
[Update April 26th 2018: This is not a new poem but one that was inadvertently deleted and which I feel deserves to be read. Some people consider the classic villanelle form dated, even irrelevant to modern life. Well, we must agree to differ.
In my experience, its use of repeated lines (as with any repetition) helps the reader to remember the poem; remembering, in turn, invites further thought. Encouraging any audience to think on about whatever he or she is saying has to be (surely?) what motivates any author of any art form.] RNT
[Update April 22, 2017: Tragically, history - like the worst of human nature - has a nasty habit of repeating itself: http://www.newnownext.com/cnn-chechnya-gay-concentration-camps/04/2017/
So will the politicians of the world unite and DO something about these atrocities?
Sign the petition? (I did.) You don't have to be gay (just human) to recognise and be sickened by any appalling inhumanity towards anyone.
Readers (gay people among others subjected to various prejudices) often email me. Many want to know why I suggest being gay is still a problem in the twenty-first century. It isn't...so long as you live in a gay-friendly environment among gay-friendly family and friends and have a gay-friendly workplace. Not everyone does, of course...] RNT
Now, January 27th marks Holocaust Memorial Day when the world, as always on that day, rightly remembers the horrors of the Nazi death camps. In April (23rd/24th)Yom HaShoah commemorates the six million + Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Too often, though, I hear people gloss over the fact that millions of non-Jews suffered the same tragedy.
“Although the term Holocaust victims generally refers to the victims of a systematic genocide of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany, the Nazis also murdered a large number of non-Jewish people who were considered subhuman (Untermenschen) or undesirable. Non-Jewish (gentile) victims of the Holocaust included Slavs (e.g. Russians, Poles, Ukrainians and Serbs), Romanis (gypsies), lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) individuals;] the mentally or physically disabled; Soviet POWs, Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses,] Spanish Republicans, Freemasons, people of color (especially the Afro-German Mischlinge, called "Rhineland Bastards" by Hitler and the Nazi regime); the Deaf, leftists, Communists, trade unionists, social democrats, socialists, anarchists, and every other minority or dissident not considered Aryan (Herrenvolk, or part of the "master race") Taking into account all of the victims of persecution, the Nazis systematically killed an estimated six million Jews and an additional 11 million people during the war.” - Wikipedia.
Once, on Holocaust Memorial Day, at the public library where I was working, staff created a ‘Holocaust Tree’ and anyone could (as many did) tie a personal message or comment to its branches. Before I went to lunch, I noticed that someone had written, ‘Remembering all the gay people who perished in the death camps.’ By the time I returned from lunch, it had been removed. As a poet who also happens to be gay, I was having none of that, and replaced it with the same message. It was a busy day, though, and I did not see it removed a second time. Needless to say, I replaced it, and no one removed it again.
We must not forget them, those victims, none of them, nor should we (ever) forget that history is a continuum; we must guard against its repeating itself, wherever, and in whatever shape or form, as best we can…speak up and act, not bury our heads in the Politics of Convenience and turn a blind eye, as so many did with The Holocaust.
Nazism was a terrible thing. It is one of the 21st century's greater tragedies that right wing extremism worldwide continues to grow while actively, often violently expressing its prejudices against others - anti-semitism, homophobia, racism ... Even so, wherever the body may be silenced, be sure the free mind-body-spirit of love and peace will shout all the louder down the Corridors of Time ... in the perennial hope that certain people may yet start listening.
This poem is a villanelle/
WHERE HISTORY HANGS ITS HEAD or S-H-A-M-E, GHOSTS OF PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE
For Jews, Slavs and others, no pity
shown the victims of Nazi genocide;
roll call for a sickening inhumanity
For their cultural-religious identity,
thousands in the gas chambers died;
for Jews, Slavs and others, no pity
Same sex lovers corrupting Society
(cried Nazis targeting us with pride);
roll call for a sickening inhumanity
Roma, too, targets of a Nazi bigotry
for which so many suffered and died;
for Jews, Slavs and others ... no pity
An indelible blot on pages of history
(nor Earth Mother 's tears ever dried)
roll call for a sickening inhumanity
Holocaust, haunting human memory
(no want of inhuman acts worldwide);
for Jews, Slavs and others, no pity;
roll call for a sickening inhumanity
Copyright R. N. Taber 2016
Labels: death camps, ethnic cleansing, extermination camps, gay people, Germany, gypsies, history, Holocaust, homosexuals, Jews, Nazism, persecution, poetry, political opponents, prejudice, Roma, Slavs, wartime
posted by R. N. Taber | 15:47
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