MARCH 11, 1942

Photo by S. Auberle

March 11, 1942 - A day to be remembered...
"Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, asocials, criminals and prisoners of war were gathered, stuffed into cattle cars on trains and sent to Auschwitz.
                                   ~  Google

Paris--first deportation of those to be murdered

are herded into train cars

this day, bound for Auschwitz--

the first of over one million to die there

and across the ocean in America

I am  born the day before.

Here stops my poem.  Seventy years later

what is left to say?  Again, I am just born...

I have the same number of words today

I had that first hour

as I lay there new and safe--

by the luck of some heavenly lottery

a long straw waving in my tiny fist.

Will it change anything

for me to remember

that Jewish child born the same day

in Paris, City of Love,

or the small Gypsy girl, the father

who stole milk to feed  them?

And should I say I'm sorry

and by the grace of some god

might they, somewhere, hear?

Will those two words change anything

in this world of instant everything?

Maybe the one word left to say

is the one word never to forget--

remember...

~  mimi