Hi,

I came across your poem, liked what I read and would like to share my thoughts about it.


Overall Impression: Passionate, almost radical views of Nazi Germans who allowed unspeakable atrocities to happen to all who they, together with their Führer, didn't consider worthy enough to live among them, and the earth as such.


Grammar / Suggestions to improve:

Beware. Below I've pointed out, corrected things and made suggestions based on how I would've put it. However, I'm ESL, so you might not agree with everything!



1st stanza
(...) forget the atrocities of the Reich(comma)

2nd stanza

at Birkenstock, Auschwitz(hyphen)Birkenau;
that's the official name, It was kind of "double camp". "Auschwitz" was the region's administrative center and arrival place for the victims where they waited for their death while "Birkenau" was the place where the actual "elimination" took place. (Birkenstock is a German shoe company, just to get everything straight.)

What did they think, (no comma)nothing,
I would put the nothing here, after the question, with an exclamation mark. Has more impact.


3rd stanza
were loaded on trains to disappear(comma)
(...) loaded on a ship
sent into the Channel for planes to bomb? THAT happened as well!? Truly, I had no idea, although having done research with my mom about WWII.


4th stanza
(...) and their husbands,(period)


5th stanza
Ten years into Nazi reign(comma)


6th stanza
stuffed their ears, pretended innocence,(no comma)


8th stanza
(everyone not carrying German-ness in their blood;(Question mark)
The Jews, (...)
their neighbors across borders(comma)


9th stanza
in the first "great war" (comma) then the next
at atrocious suffering at their hands(comma)
(...) France(comma) and all of Europe.


10th stanza
but lost in every way to count a war(comma)
just to blow up their conceit(comma)
what they wanted to believe(semicolon)


11th stanza

power beyond the unthinkable(semicolon)
To the last two lines: most who contributed to Hitler's and the Nazi's ascent then are dead by now. Seventy years are a long time.


12th stanza

(...) in deepest worship.(question mark)
(...) accept the days' horrors (comma)


14th stanza

they and their children were,(no comma) so above



Personal Impact: Don't get me wrong here, Miss Ann. The "radicalism" above-mentioned and barely hidden in these lines is more than justified ... as I hinted at already I share your opinion. What my ancestors did - or better did not, and so allowed to happen and agreed and contributed to - is inexcusable in any way. (Although that word is way too weak when you ask me, but you know what I mean?)

You connected these atrocities with strong expressions that certainly didn't leave me cold and images, of which some even perverted family and vacation or weekend idylls. But exactly that it was back then!

I may also add at this point that I found it very fitting that Americans and also the other Allies(?) forced German citizens into the Concentration Camps after Nazi Germany was defeated, and forced them to look at what they've ignored and so allowed, agreed to and silently contributed to happen. They didn't deserve anything less. They also needed it to become open to spark the nation we are today, almost seventy years later.

In 10th grade, my history course visited a Concentration Camp in the Alsace (I grew up on the German side and also went to school there). It wasn't Auschwitz-Birkenau, but there were elimination facilities as well. What I had only read about in books or seen in documentaries, I was now confronted with in reality. I could touch the buttons and levers on the ovens, go into the Zyklon B showers, see where the victims were forced to live ... It was a sunny, warm day, but not at that place. It was ... dark and cold and evil. It shocked me to the core to be there. The last straw were a group of old people in summer clothes visiting, going down the same path as my peers and I with solemn and moved faces, and talking in a very weird German I first believed to be Alsace dialect. When I saw the tattooed numbers on the inner side an old man's forearm, I knew the language had been Jiddish. The Nazi dictatorship had been wiped out for 55 years, but then, I was ashamed to be German.

Nazi Germany was like a malign tumor in the World Community then ... the Allies were only the "immune defense" that restored its health. It was right that this Germany was eliminated from the face of the earth. It was also a great move especially from the Western Allies that they gave us opportunity to restore our country again, and finally even helped us in growing to the hopeful partners and friends we are to them today.

We are your partners and friends, USA, UK, and France, now are we? *gnawing insecure on bottom lip*

I may also add that I may have easily ended up in a CC myself as well, as sick as I'm in the head (I'm bipolar) and as liberal as I'm politically and socially. (I have nothing against anyone, not Jews, not homosexuals ... except Nazis; oh, and organizations which violate my civil rights behind my back) ... and as Polish. Yes, I'm half-Polish as my father's parents came from Silesia, which is Polish again today. What a horrible idea that is! It raises my hair, but thank God it'll never be more than hypothetically. *shudders*

I think though that the repeated warning to the world to never allow that we - the "current" Germans - ever turn Nazi and go at the world again, is unnecessary: we know that ourselves, and we're doing our best to keep that from happening.

We ourselves don't want that.

Do you know that we have a Nazi Party, the NPD (Nationalsozialistische Partei Deutschland)? Not many letters missing to conclude to NSDAP again, right? Here, most ironically, democracy itself is throwing spokes in our wheel. Our politicians, throughout all parties, all us people, even the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, the highest legal defender of our - now worldfriendly - "Grundgesetz" (our Constitution) since years try to find a way to get at least the "official", "legalized" part of the ugly Nazi legacy banned from our political and social culture (the Nazi underground is a whole different thing! ), but it doesn't work as the freedoms of speech and opinion prevent these tries again and again.

Do you know what a feeling it is for me, a modern German, for all us Germans, to have a Nazi party we don't get rid of because these democratic rights we fought and also died for prevent it? Isn't that SICK? And I think that also answers your question why any German can "excuse" anything that happened back then. We DON'T.

I strongly hope, Miss Ann, that your righteous outrage in these lines is guided toward that "former" Germany, and not us, the Germans we have become today. It would be a horrible idea for sure as well.

And I hope my grammatically, and partly content revisions didn't piss you off. But with a subject like this, everything should be as sharpened and perfect as it can get. Only then, it truly unfolds its full power (now, it was only 99,9%. ) Okay, I admit it. I'm a rotten, little German nitpicker as well.

But seriously, thanks for writing and sharing this.

from Germany


Don't forget that I'm just someone voicing her opinion. You know best what's best for your poem. Thank you for sharing it.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .