Holocaust Memorial Day

Missing

We are smoke, invisible ash in your hair,
dust on your skin, we outstare you from photos
mute; you have to work to unravel our stories,
exhume our communities, now graves. We are mist,
your lost people, but some of us never lived nor died,
the children never born to sisters, uncles, aunts
war-torn from this family book. We are memory
- a bowl, a wedding ring, a child’s boot, all looted
but remain while we have no physical shape.
We are the past, we wrap you in provocative arms:
letters flung from cattle trucks shunting to Auschwitz
flutter like leaves; diary fragments bud underground;
a poem unfurls in a field of teeth; here 836,255 dresses
are stored in a heap, each with a story of how it
arrived. We are the missing tribe in your dreams
of feasts. We are the empty chairs, the family
trees ending suddenly, in silence. We are sighs,
a horror on the map, vomit on the tracks,
pulled through these postcard-pretty towns
to Dachau, Belzec, Belsen, Treblinka
wrapped in a prayer shawl, a rug, a mountain
of blankets, knowing we are not coming back.
We are shadows, raus, get out, schnell! We
flicker at the edges, almost glimpsed in these
grey thoughts on grey days. We are light, we
echo in this family likeness, these repercussions
through time, a ripple, history will repeat,
no, will repeat, no! We are history, a ghetto,
a factory, a labour camp, a mine; we are
ghosts, we are your missing people, we have arrived.


by Jacqueline Mézec

'Missing' was commissioned by the Holocaust Memorial Day Organising Committee (Jersey) to be read each year at the annual ceremony.


At the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Jersey there were several readings, including an extract from:

The Inaugural Address
President Barack Hussein Obama
Tuesday 20 January 2009

"... For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it... "


HMD09 Theme: STAND UP TO HATRED

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