The Shoes

**Introductory Note for "The Shoes":

The old man on my television screen, a Holocaust survivor, described in vivid detail, what he could recall
enduring as a prisoner of Auschwitz.

His heart-breaking recollection shattered all of the ill-formed illusions I unknowingly held about this place.

He spoke about  returning to Auschwitz for the first time since being liberated from there
all those years ago. He came to pay his respects at The Holocaust Memorial.

As he spoke about seeing the glass display case of shoes, I closed my eyes
and wept bitterly for his suffering. This poem was born as a result of witnessing that life-altering interview.

I hope this poem touches you as deeply as the events that inspired it touched me.


The Shoes

The crystal clear window offers up a stunning glimpse into the depths
of man's capacity for violence against his fellow human beings.

Listen closely, with your heart and your mind, rather than with your deafened ears, and you
can still hear the sobs of despair, the pleas for deliverance, the whimpers of
forsakenness.

Three and four to a bunk, the soldiers order, with only a thin blanket
and something that passes for a pillow...the boards pressing against
emaciated bodies that barely sustain life.

And always, day and night, floating ever higher, are the ashes:
the smoke of dreams and hopes extinguished,
the embers of a multitude of lives that have been snuffed out.

"Women to the right, Men to the left"... are words that will haunt a civilization for an eternity.

"Showers" they were called, bringing to travel-weary minds, perhaps, the thought of a moment's relief
from the filth and stench of traveling 100 deep in a single rail car designed to haul cattle.

Stripped of all they owned, for some their only possessions
were the clothes on their backs and the shoes on their feet.

Huddled together in the cold, hearing the locks slamming home,
waiting for the cleansing water to wash away their pain......Never guessing
until the last possible moment the true purpose of those tiled rooms.

What were their last thoughts, as the canisters of gas came raining down through the openings
in the ceiling?

How many atrocities and horrors can the human mind endure before it simply shuts down and
quietly awaits death?
How far down the corridors of human history will their tortured screams echo?

And how many of the generations to come can fathom the sheer power of evil that walked these
grounds in 1944?

How many of the ones to come will still be able to hear the echoes of those lessons begging to be
learned and never, ever repeated?

Will they still care about the 1.5 million murdered? Will they be able to recognize
the warning signs of history repeating itself in the future?

And, if they do, will they have the strength of character, the fortitude, the determination, and the
compassion for their fellow man to prevent it from happening again?

If you think the answer for those yet to come is an unequivocal "Yes", then pause .....just for a
moment, and look around you:

Sudan, Congo, Darfur, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Yugoslavia,
Ethiopia, Kenya, Afghanistan, and
the list goes on and on and on.


What have we learned from the previous generation's sacrifice? Today, as then, the world strains
to look anywhere, and everywhere, except at where the problems really lie. Our token efforts
make for good media coverage, but are, in truth,
nothing more than slapping a Band-Aid on a mortal head wound.

Have we, as a society, learned nothing from their sacrifices?
Did they truly die in vain?
Have we grown so world weary and jaded to atrocities of this nature
that are now the norm of of our human existence?

Still staring through the window pane at the 67 foot long display of shoes,
my heart wrenches in my chest, as I come to realize that every pair of shoes I see
once belonged to a person that put them on every day, and walked and breathed and laughed
and wept and raged and prayed and hoped and dreamed......

Just like me.

Mothers, Fathers, Brothers, Sisters, Babies, Grandmothers, Grandfathers,
Uncles, Aunts, Nieces and Nephews, Neighbors, Sweethearts,
Strangers, Lovers, and even Wanderers.......

All gone forever.

1.5 million + lives never again to see the light of day,
never again to hope, to dream, to pray,
to love.

And all that is left to tell their stories
are the shoes.......

So damn many pairs of shoes.


Kimberly D. Huggins
5-19-2009
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