The Ghosts of AUSCHWITZ

January 28, 1945.

The shadows were cast on the walls and on the grounds.
The heaps of ashes were now turned to mounds
Mounds upon mounds covered with daises
Daises growing like wreaths on mounds of ashes.
Ashes of those without corpses
Corpses of those without skeletons
Skeletons of those without bones
Bones of those without graves
Of the millions of lives
Cremated alive in the gas chambers
In the ovens of the Nazi goons
Goons of the satanic incarnate Hitler
Hitler was the Lucifer.

In the Holocaust of the last Millennium
Millions of the children of Abraham were silenced in the crematorium
With no epitaph
But mounds of ashes denote their cenotaph.
And as I counted the last of the six million beads,
The ghosts bowed their heads.

January 28, 2005.

The shadows were cast on the grass
As they said the memorial mass
Praying for those we will never forget
Those for whom the sun will never set
Those we still see their ghosts
Floating from pillars to posts.

I sat down on the grounds of the killing fields
Killing fields of the silence of the lambs
We were dumb and numb like sheep
And we had no voices to weep
The nightmares were like ghouls
Ghouls haunting the souls
Souls of our lingering memories
And echoes of our unsung elegies
Elegies for the…
The dead we cannot see.

For the name, I cannot remember
I have not forgotten the number
My number was 4427
Even the memorial is written in heaven.


Olga Sharon stood statuesque in the snow.  She was as quiet as the place was silent.  I was standing by her side.  And I loved the white flakes falling from the sky.  We did not mind the chill.  We were even feeling warm. 
“Yuri.”
“Yes, Olga.”
“  I can still feel the heat from the gas chambers.  And I can still sniff the acrid smell of the charred remains of the dead.”
I saw the tears trickling down her eyes.  Trickling down to her sunken cheeks and I put my arms around her.  But I could not stop her tears.  I let her sob.
But for how long would she continue like this.
She always came here on every memorial of our rescue.
That day.  Sixty years ago.  January 27, 1945.
When the Red Army came to our camps, we thought we were dreaming.
When we thought all hopes were lost.
When uncountable numbers were already dead and we were like the living dead.
Their ashes were all over the grounds.
The remains of our Papa and Mama and our sisters, Ruth and Sarah mingled with the millions of others.
I could tell their own voices from the deafening screams piercing into our ears from the gas chambers.  I knew the high-pitched sound of the voice of Ruth from miles.  So, I heard her screams until I heard them no more. I was hearing things and I was seeing things. Contortions and distortions of my heart and soul.
The echoes rang in my head throughout the night.  We were all sobbing and harrowing in agony.  But, they must not hear us, lest we would be shot on the spot and dumped in the mass graves.  Millions died this way.  So, we muffled the sounds of our cries and choked silently.
“  See Ruth.”
I was muttering day and night.
Throughout.  Four years of nightmares.
We never stopped weeping.  And we have never stopped weeping.  Olga and I were still shedding tears until today.

We were not alone.
The bereaved.  The survivors.  Thousands.
Those who were saved from being cremated like the unfortunate ones.
Millions.
I would not be able to even recall their names.  But I could recall many of the numbers.
Papa was 2201.  Mama was 2431.  Ruth was 2708.  And Ruth was 2023.
Olga was 4021.  I was 2432.  And Uncle Boaz was 4427.
All stamped on our lower arms.
We were numbered like cattle.  But we were worse than the cattle. 
The cattle had a better death than us.
We died the worst kind of death.
We were burnt alive in the catacombs of hell. Our bodies were reduced to nothingness whilst the rest of humankind watched in utter horror.
We were left to our terrible state.  The rest of the world did nothing.
The world had never loved us.  They preferred us dead.  The world hated us.
Even God ignored us.  As if Yahweh preferred us dead than alive.
He wanted us to come home.  Since the world did not want us.
Lucifer had his way.  Hell was let loose on earth.  Hitler ruled the day.
The Final Solution was the total annihilation of our race.  To be erased from the face of the earth.  Why?
“  Because, we are the chosen ones of God,” Papa said.
“  So, the evil one hated us,” said Mama.
The evil one was cast down from heaven and in his fierce anger and wrath, he took his revenge on us.  And God did not do anything?
“  The death of the saints is a joy unto the Lord,” Sarah quoted from the Psalms.
This made me dumb and numb.  I did not understand why this God was not bothered when the Nazis were slaughtering us.
This God must be strange.  Indeed.
I was only four.  And Olga was only six.
That was why we were spared.
We were not old enough for the gas chambers?

The shadows of Papa and Mama with those of Ruth and Sarah passed by.  My eyes followed the fleeting figures of their apparitions.
My tears came.  But, they were frozen on my depressed cheeks within seconds.  I used my right index finger to scrape off my frozen tears.
“  Olga, let us go home,” I said pleadingly.
I was getting tired of standing.  For over four hours in the cold.
The sun had gone west.
The night was descending upon the land.
I saw the fleeting shadows again in the twilight.
“  Olga.”
She was not even paying attention to me.
She was still gazing at the cenotaph.
The face had a strange grimace.  Her face was full of wrinkles. 
But they did not hide her beauty even in old age.
My sisters looked like our mother.  She was a beautiful woman and a wonderful mother.  My father was proud of her.  Olga was the closest to our mother in looks and character.  And she attracted many suitors from her teens to even these days.  But, she refused to marry.  And I refused to marry too.
We were no longer interested in having another family since what happened to us.
Olga said why she did not end it all was for my sake. 
“Nobody to look after you.”
I thanked God she did not do it.
We consoled each other.
We had no regrets.
We were only waiting.
To join those who left us behind.  Our Papa and Mama with Ruth and Sarah.
We have been enduring the agonies of the ironies of this life.
We did not want to bring sorrow to any child.  We did not want anybody to mourn us.  We did not want anybody to be bereaved.  We have had enough of the nightmares and we wanted to save others from the agonies of our sorrows.
The cloak of darkness was covering the day.
“  Yuri.”
“  Yes, Olga.”
“  Let’s go home.”
I looked at her.
I saw dimples breaking her wrinkles below her cheeks.
Olga was smiling!
“  Olga?”
“  Yes, Yuri.”
“  Why are you smiling?”
“  I saw Mama and Papa and Ruth and Sarah smiling at me.”
“  Where are they?”
She must have seen the apparitions too!
She looked up pointing her right hand at the sky.
“  There.  I saw them in the clouds.”
“  Oh, oh!”  I cooed.
Olga took my left hand.
She had been doing that since January 27, 1945.
Since that day the Red Army from Siberia came to set us free from hell.
Auschwitz was hell on earth.

We turned our backs on Auschwitz.  And we never looked back.


By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima.
JANUARY 27, 2005.
To mark the 60th memorial of the Jews who were freed from the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Poland, by the Red Army of Russia at the end of World War 2.
My father, Sunday Eke of blessed memory fought in the World War 2.

this is first rate. ouststanding!!.

@ Orikinla hope you wont be annoyed with me for saying this, this is the first time I've been this impressed with your stuff.

ziddy:

this is first rate. ouststanding!!.

@ Orikinla hope you wont be annoyed with me for saying this, this is the first time I've been this impressed with your stuff.

You are right.
And I respect your judgment.

Read Memories of a Refugee Child on Amazon and your rational opinion would be appreciated.

Ziddy,
I don't get annoyed if people panel beat my work.
But I get annoyed when they veer off to attack my moniker.

Let me tell you what happened when the new Pope went to the memorial for AUSCHWITZ
and was asking God why He allowed the Holocaust to happen.
A magnificent rainbow appeared across the sky, but the Pope never saw it.
God reminded him of the covenant he made with Noah after the Flood, but new Pope was ignorant of the divine sign.
I sent a mail to The Vatican to let them know.
Killing even 6 million Jews does not change the covenant of God.
God does not see things through human eyes.

Thank you for reading.