STUDENT ANTHOLOGY
HOLOCOST POEM
Ms. Stauffer’s ninth grade CLUE (Creative Learning in a Unique Environment) classes have been studying the witless genocide of many people that took place in during World War II in Europe, the Holocaust. The death tolls of the Holocaust include two to three million Soviet POW (prisoners of war), one to one point five million politicals, six-hundred thousand Serbs, more than two-hundred thousand Poles, two hundred twenty thousand to five hundred thousand of the Roma (gypsies), eighty thousand to two-hundred thousand free masons, seventy-five thousand to two hundred thousand disabled, seven thousand to sixteen thousand Spanish POW, twenty-five hundred to five thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as many others.
The students read two Holocaust memoirs; Four Perfect Pebbles by Marion Blumenthal, and Night by Eliezer Wiesel. In their study of Four Perfect Pebbles, the students created posters representing chapters of the book. In their study of Night, the students created poems by taking fifty powerful words straight from the book, and using two articles, two two-letter prepositions, and two conjunctions. They could work as partners, combining their words. The poems are written to express the ideas of the book.
Merciless shadows petrified skeletal victims
Childhood half-burned in wild flames
Devil wandered behind suffering sad-eyed angel
Heart torn with barbed wire
Faith escaped evil piercing corpses
Eyes followed ghostlike masquerade
Executioner savagely liquidated God
Broken corpse remembers cruel bleeding hatred
Mournful weeping awoke screaming
Hysteria split invisible silence
Animal ached onto blood-stained bandage
Dreamy sleep exhausted burning ashes
Secret rebellion began notorious sabotage
Condemned night suffered fear of death
Cringing nightmare threatened starved time
Smoke rising off altar choked evening
Shaking wounds begged emptied hell
By Salaam H. and Megan M.,
Ms. Stauffer’s third period class
