Yom Hashoah

Today is Yom Hashoah, The Jewish Remembrance Day of the Holocaust. I wanted to write a little background on the poem that's below. I'm a Newfoundlander. Our province was an independent state until 1949 at the close of the war when we joined Canada. The main industry has always been fishing. At the outbreak of WWII many Newfoundlanders volunteered (there was no conscription in the state), in a lot of cases because it was a good paycheck at a time when our economy was in bad shape (still is today). People actually signed up because it meant that they'd get a new pair of boots, a luxury very few Newfoundlanders had known. Some of the first Allied soldiers that helped liberate the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen were from my home and it left quite an impression on them and on the collective memory of our people. This poem is based on accounts I've heard of that experience. This piece was posted a little over a month ago but I was inclined to repeat it today, and was encouraged to do so by a friend of mine, Lynn. I hope anyone who stops through here today will take a moment to think about lessons that we should learn from a terrible time in human history, and how we can all be more aware of atrocities that persist up until this present moment.

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BERGEN-BELSEN

We were fishermen
from a quiet place.
Poor, but strong --
we'd seen holds
bursting with the catch,
snow-shoe hare
snared, wrenching,
begging for a cracked neck.
We'd seen remnants of caribou,
paunched, quartered, putrid.
We'd seen Normandy,
been butchered and exploded,
smelled detritus in our nostrils,
heads leaning to the hail
raining down
like lightening zippers.
We crossed country
wearing half-khaki grime.
We saw bombed out cities
painted Kilroy.
We died and we cried.
We killed and we died.
That our journey should end
with so grisly a sight
writhing before our eyes
like cod below deck,
how can we go to sea again?
We were fishermen.