The Long March (Part Three)

Sources of References: Polish Air Force Associations’.
Translation of S.R’s responses to set questions in his deposition, lodged in Sikorski Museum Archives.
T.R. 10.01.2006.

POEM; read for the Poles and Slavic Nations on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2005.

WAR STORIES.

I listen to your wartime stories
And I cry.
I do not know if I cry for you or for myself
Or for the cruelty of the desperate situation you describe.
Your impossible escape from death:
How some of you instinctively escaped,
How some of you died following the same instincts.
How some of you had been so resigned to the hope,
That all you felt and heard - was not true
Knowing it was true
And there was no escape.

Youth knows less fear, and faced with death
Would, if it was possible,
Eat it’s self — and regurgitate itself later
And buy time to avoid the inevitable.
I know this is impossible - but
I look at the faces of the youths listening
And see their numbed empathy
As your story becomes their story, their history.
This can be only your story.

Ours is to ensure that nothing like this
Or faintly similar ever happens again.
This is the value of your story,
This is what we must speak out against
Before, even an idea of it should germinate.

Holocausts have been in Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Rwanda,
Ethiopia and elsewhere
And politicians let it happen
Let it happen.
They let it happen.

C: T.R.
29. 01. 04.

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