Saturday, December 22, 2007

Dachau


If you heard that around 1945
You would practically cry
That's the least Hitler's first concentration camp can do
When it was looked upto as the "best" too.

The site crawls up beyond a black gate
Wrapped by electric barbs, upon gravel & hate
As cold and empty as the death it spurned
Brought to life only by the stories of the burned.










A main office sits at the centre, where cruel plans were laid
How suffering prisoners could be tortured, traitors repaid
Adjoining a firing wall that came to their plans' aid
Where executions thrived, blood spilled so lives could fade.












The wall grows into the true special prisons
Here priests, assassins were housed for treason
Hung by the wrists, gnawed at by dogs
Put in "standing cells" where they'd be as alive as logs.














The other side of the camp is just as dreading
With traces of "bunkers" for average prisoners' housing
Only they were often packed much beyond capacity
With deliberate shortages in all facility.







The goriest part is perhaps the gas chamber
Next to a hungry crematorium that personifies danger
Now, flanked though it is, by holy cathedrals
Nothing can amend the pointless burials.





"Work brings freedom" is what the walls once echoed
If we could ask the dead, the truth would be told
Dachau started where freedom ceased
Only their souls now can be wished peace.











The urge to write this is not sickness, no
Only a humble attempt for the world to know
That no mankind should ever face
What Dachau proudly put in place.