Holocaust Memorial Day

[Pearly Di]

It's Holocaust Memorial Day today in the UK. I was wondering where to place this ... bit too intense and sad for Bag End. Tol Eressëa seemed better.

I wrote this poem some time ago, and I offer it humbly as a sort of prayer. This is, after all, holy ground.



To Anne Frank

Your fertile mind,
your quick judgments:
Every parent’s daughter,
the universal teenager.

Your pale scrap of a face,
dark hair like a flag.
All your hormones and hopes,
thin reed in the wind.

Your sweet humanity.
Your terrible journey.
Your bright words, undimmed.
To Anne: “L’chaim!”

And the names of the torturers are mostly forgotten.
And they became nothing but dust and ashes.
But you and your people,
we have remembered.
And we will remember.

[JewelSong]

That is BEAUTIFUL, Di.

Made me cry.

[Pearly Di]

Thanks, Jewel.

It's unbearable to think about that bright, feisty teenager's terrible end, and her sister's. Their poor mother - she wasn't even with her girls.

Thank God her precious diary survived (thanks to that dear, wonderful woman Miep Gies).

Anne was not a saintly martyr but a blessedly normal teenage girl. Her words speak for all the other, countless, lives viciously snuffed out by an evil regime.

[Lalaith]

That was beautiful, Di.

[WampusCat]

A wonderful tribute.