Poem of William Hermanns

                   Conscience Arise!

I feel the tears you wept
When you were hauled off in cattle cars.
Your tears are counted.

I feel the thoughts that have crept
Through the Polish nights from your barracks.
How they are haunted!

Your eyes would see huge stacks
That dye the air black-blue,
Smoke spewing day and night.
Is this for children, too?

Come German youth. Don't search the face
Of those who made you. Grasp the world.
Italy's sunbeams, Spain's ocean spray

Will soothe and fill past's somber space.
Your parents are of Christian faith,
And if their look is hard and grey

So is their Land. Oh master race!
Of old it rolled the Teuton wheel
O'er Europe to conquer fertile fields.
Now makes Mercedes, Krupp's hard steel.

Go forth and let your young hands share
What father's thrift has piled for you,
And let your eyes shine where you go.

Sons of their wealth, you're not the heir
Of guilt. And where the door stays closed,
Don't knock again. Treat it as foe.

Your hands—aren't they your father's hands?
Some rich, some poor, gloved and ungloved,
Their hails are dead, but not the proverb:
It's better to be feared than loved.

Go forth, be feared, like a phoenix rise
From the ashes of the Chrystal Night,
Rise over Europe with mighty wings!

Who has those granaries of such size,
Smokestacks so high, castles so luring,
Through which efficiency steams and sings!

Go forth, young Germans, and don't touch
The memories of yesterday;
Nor shall your schoolbooks. Head up straight.
Go forth and smile the past away!

Your back be straight, but not your mind;
Oh how it swings in acrobatics
Of "though", "if", "but" and "nonetheless"!

Dance on your mental rope, unwind
The truth, prove truth to be untrue.
Write for your children books that bless!

Don't read, that "Thor will smash cathedrals"
From Heine's pen. You're Aryans.
Don't read what Goethe once opined
That Germans are barbarians!

Don't travel East, its not your taste.
That Polish race changed Auschwitz now
To sacred soil. The West, your goal!

Not to Verdun: That crimson waste
Of a German curse. Not Ouradour:
A baby-carriage damns your soul.

See London, but not Coventry—
You came here for a holiday.
Chin up, erect. If they remember,
Your purse will smile the past away.

The future is yours, for six million Jews
Were never gassed. Perhaps a handful
By Poles and Gypsies, your historian writes.

The story of Auschwitz—who let it loose
To smear our forebears dignity:
The holy order of the German Knights.

The Jews let it loose. All this, I was told
When I watched with young Germans the Eichmann Trial.
Chin up and grim they looked at me—
Come new generation I'll help your denial.

I'll travel to Auschwitz. There on its gate
Stands Hitler's promise: "Work makes free."
For those alighting the cattle cars,

A welcome of hope. And another bait:
The dolls for children. All this, no more.
No lampshades tattooed, no blood-stained bars,

No mattresses filled with human hair.
Yes youth, I'll clear your mind of tension,
I'll write on the gate the Fuhrer's words:
"Conscience is a Jewish invention."

I'll clean up Auschwitz and no testimony
Shall point at you: The Nordic master race,
Blue eyed efficiency. What costs the world?

Chin up! And is your conscience stout and stony,
Console yourself. The Church, too, burned the Jews.
Is there a Hell? If so, she may be hurled

There first. Who cares when man's free will is Heaven.
No powers of evil handle you; that's Bible lore.
From Einstein—there's no Jewish key
Unless your preachers fit it for the German door.

What's with the law: No energy is lost?
Turn agonies to ghostly entities
That hover to choke your smile and stench your beer and wine?

Can cries of two million children who were tossed
In ovens, hover over Berlin's wall?
Cause brother-hate? Is all this heavenly design?

Oh youth, don't beat your breast with Mea Culpa.
What happens has a natural cause. There lurks no vengeful doom
Caused by an invisible hand. Have faith in me:
I'll rearrange that Polish Auschwitz with a German broom.

Oh youth, embrace the future, this is not your lot:
The guilt of fathers visited on children's children.
Remember, this the Jewish book has told.

I'll throw it to the Auschwitz bone heap, there to rot.
The only thing I'll save are sacks of gold-filled teeth—
Efficiency, not conscience, sparkles gold.

If someone asks, "Does not our past accuse us?"
Then shake your German finger in his face.
Tell him: "Our seed is blossoming now abroad
In mental uniform of the Teuton race."

A German youth steps forth, cries: "Stay your hand!
I have a conscience. Don't rearrange.
I'll lead a pilgrimage through Auschwitz's gate—
We Germans, we shall change.

                                                  William Hermanns    [P234]