A Poem Inscribed in Concrete: Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
She sat upon the garden wall fragile as the rose
Whose last petal hung from its vine deeply red
And beautiful, it’s withered beauty clinging till
The chill night breeze blew it down to feed on
The earth once more
And there she fed the squirrels that came to her
As if to safety and to warmth, here gentle
Laughter ringing, she held the girl to small,
Grey, gently grasping hands and wanted not to talk of days gone
By of losses and of pain, but
Rather to gather memories of love round her like a blanket
She leaned and fed and talked to him though she
Believed not because he could not answer why
And she laughed and she laughed and she
Laughed…… And through it all She loved
Family Camp B II in Birkenau was the only camp that kept families together. In September 1943 the first transport of 10,000 Jews arrived from Theresienstad. Families were kept together to show prisoners arriving by train that they were not being sent to the crematorium. The inmates were forced to send postcards to the ghetto stating they were alive and together. Their last postcards were written prior to their extermination, yet the cards were dated and mailed after their death. The final transport of 10,000 Jews arrived in March 1944. In early July 1944 Dr. Joseph Mengele selected 89 of the Birkenau Boys between the ages of 14 and 16. The reasons for selecting these 89 is unknown. The remaining inmates were gassed on July 10 and 11 1944.
