Unforgotten

How lucky we are.

Lucky doesn't even begin to describe it.

Mothers smothering their babies for fear that the German officers would hear their screams and find them.
Fathers and grandfathers humiliated, beaten, ordered off the pavement and into the gutter.
Humiliated doesn't even begin to describe it.

Families torn apart, brutally thrust out of each others arms, separated, forever.
Wives weeping for their husbands. Walking and weeping, searching.
Their loves , their lives, vanished.

Torn.

No peace, quiescence.
Irrevocably and irreversibly afraid. Every bomb blast, every gun fire, every scream or knock on the door.

Burning bodies on the street, children starving to death nearby.
Trembling hands, quivering lips. Sadness.

Shamed.

Soul disfigured.

The law. Merciless, pitiless, relentless.
Savage.

Humans eliminated like vermin for a man's sickness. For a man's hate.

Those people I will remember, and love.
They couldn't possibly have died, like that, in vain.

Unforgotten.