Smell

Smell the burn,

Of burning flesh...

The stench is overpowering,

Try to work as fast as I can,

To despose of the carcasses.

The guards watch us dispassionately, 

Urging us on, beating us cruelly. 

Yet something is wrong,

With them...

Besides them being sick!

They seem...

Yes...I can smell it on them,

They are scared!

They keep glancing east,

Something is coming,

Can smell it on the wind.

More bodies, frail, scrawny,

Stinking of disease and shit.

More to feed the insatiable appetites, 

Of the ovens...

Whose mouths gape for more meat,

But only get bags of bones.

Cringe, as a friend I see,

A Jew who was kind to me,

I owe him much, but now...

I will never repay his kindness.

Glare at some guards as they run by,

Shouting at others, fear stinking off them.

The bodies stop...they usher us out,

Command us to go to our hovels

and wait...

The silence echos around us,

The chimneys spew no more black into the sky.

We stand, skeletons one and all,

Jews, gypsies, gays and us dissidents, 

Waiting...

It feels so wrong, no beatings,

No shouting, nothing.

Meander pointlessly, 

Aimlessly around each other.

Walking dead,

Emancipated beyond the point of death.

Why do we just not lay down and die?

So much easier...

Yet hope still burns...you can smell it.

From the east comes the grumbling of a beast,

Cower in fear, they have returned,

To finish what they have started.

They are Russian!

We are to tired, to sick,

To try to cheer, 

But deep down we celebrate,

When they ride the gates down.

I can smell my...our freedom!

But first I smell an alluring smell,

Of dried fruit...