A Nightmare

The air was tainted with ashes and black smoke.

The stench was foul, making your stomach flip.

Hills of rotting corpses in every direction.

Flames of orange, red, and yellow raid the horizon.

A fence dividing sickly walking skeletons from the living.

White and black striped jumpsuits with a figurine across their shoulder blade separated them from the rest. 

Posters line the streets with images of rats and the figurine.

Poisoning the minds of their once neighbors.

A place for Jews, blacks, colored skins, gypsies, homosexuals.

Their rightful place. 

Or so they were told.

A nightmare you could not awake from. A nightmare that you live day and night.

Watching your family and friends and the man across the street who would wave to you good morning with a loaf of bread in the nap of his elbow, slowly becoming extinct with a single breath of smoke in their lungs.
Children forgetting once happy times with mornings filled with laughter and play pretend.
Families being separated, killed and stripped of their humanity.
A girl known as Anne,
hidden behind a bookcase with barely any room to stand, filled with terror listening to bombs going off and destroying houses and local bistros.
Thousands and thousands of innocent people being starved and punished for no reason that comes to mind. Being robbed and beaten.
Men being forced into guards or death would become of their families.
This is a time none shall never forget. The faces of children and newborns being ripped from tearful mothers. Faces of the elderly and the ill. Images of families holding hands as firearms trigger with a loud noise that echoes off the gas chambers.
Never will we forget the man that brought many to excruciating pain and abrupt destruction.
Never will we forget how he glowered in fear and cowardliness as he tested a pill on his trusted advisers.
Being tortured for years on end. Sunken bodies on the riverbed tied with a brick around their neck.
Their lungs drowning in toxic clouds.
Bodies and minds being ripped apart with every cruel smile tingling from his lips.
Many asking why? Why us?
We ask the same.


The oxygen tasting of ashes and deceit.
Smoke rising from firearms which went off in the night, clouding your vision.
Blood and bodies covering the cement floors.
Mountains of shoes and ripped clothing rose lower than corpses.
Smiles of relief and sorrow painting on the faces of the undead.
Prayers being answered once more.


A father of a family that perished greatly.
A room that once held hushed whispers and scared whimpers.
But beating hearts of his beloved friends, his wife, and children. His precious daughter who wanted nothing but to make a difference in the world and publish her work.
Torn pages out of books scattered the attic floor.
A diary being recovered out of the dust.


Pictures of unforgotten persons.
Stories of horror being told each year.
The air no longer smudged with intoxicating sadness and burning smells that stick to the fibers of your nose.
No longer do they suffer in pain.
No longer.