Poem of William Hermanns

         Hail Silence

Mary, you are my mother,
your son my older brother,
Jews you were both.

Yet the Jews are hated,
two thousand years berated;
then Hitler made an oath:

"I, too, kneeled in the pews
and learned to hate the Jews -
good Catholic I am.

Had First Communion as a boy,
in the procession, holy joy,
on a cushion we carried the lamb.

O, how our priest bewailed
my Jesus, who was nailed
by the filthy Jew to the cross!

And now my hour has come.
Good Catholics, beat the drum,
the Pope blessed me, your boss.

I promised to protect
Church property, respect
the convent, Catholic school.

Outside the Church, I frame
the future in God's name.
My book, Mein Kampf, my tool.

I signed Rome's Concordat
but gnaw it like a rat
assiduously away.

On my diplomatic rope
shall dance the holy pope;
his balance be: Nay, Yea.

Where I am, Christ is, too;
subhuman is the Jew.
Our Master Race their fate!

Come, youth, march and confess,
our priests cannot but bless-the
communists are my bait.

Can Auschwitz gas reach Rome?
Hail thee, Saint Peter's dome!
A pope's silence cannot smell.

It sanctifies our pact,
and Rome does not retract
even a pact with Hell.

Poland shall be smashed,
our arch foe, France be thrashed-come,
march, bring home your loot!"

The Führer spoke. Rome's dance,
like in a silent trance,
does make the Pope deaf-mute.

"Nay, Yea" danced on the rope
to have a cosmic scope:
They come--the Catholics.

Pope's blessings in their bag,
in front the swastika flag,
kill Jews and Bolsheviks.

The Pope has an excuse:
he secretly saved Jews.
Remains this deed unsung?

A child in the gas chamber calls,
"Can't breathe ... Mother ... ", then falls.
The child soon changed to dung.

When silence becomes an ally
of crime, its alibi
no history dares to give.

Six million Jews have died;
their shadows live pale-eyed-in
the Cosmic Law they live.

O Mary, my Jewish mother,
O Jesus, my older brother,
I feel the tears you weep.

No wrong ever done is lost;
soon Rome will pay the cost-the
Apocalypse doesn't sleep.

                  William Hermanns       [P366]