Holocaust article
POETRY NEVER FORGETS: Pioneer Park sixth-graders wore black T-shirts with the legend "Never Forget." At the podium, Howard Rodack belted out "Ani Ma'Amin," the same one Jews sang in 1944 on their way to Auschwitz gas chambers. This Holocaust Observance Ceremony May 5 in the Wyoming State Capitol complex brought out sixth-graders and septuagenarians alike to mark the gruesome anniversary of six million Jewish deaths in Hitler's "Final Solution." As Mt. Sinai Congregation's Uri Neil noted, another six million Poles, homosexuals, gypsies, and anti-Nazi activists also perished in the camps from 1933-45. "Never again!" That's what Jews say in response to the Holocaust. Artists and writers responded in their own unique ways. For writers, their "voices of conscience" reverberate through the decades. They could be Armenians, Native Americans, Rwandans, Jews, or Kurds. Romanian poet Paul Celan spent 18 months in a Nazi death camp. In his best-known poem, "Fugue of Death," he describes it: "Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall/we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night." Memorable poems attempt to recreate the "black milk" of other genocides. Which ones do you remember?

- posted by Michael Shay @ 4:10 PM