Forget not

Days I stood
Naked- I was bare
No water- no food
My head- no hair 

I was being punished 
For something I did
I stole a slice of bread
So my mother might live

Live she did 
But not for a long time 
Exterminated by gas
Her corpse thrown out in the dirt and grime

As fate would have  it 
I survived 
 Lived to bear witness
To Hitler’s war crimes

I bear witness to the fact
That innocents were murdered 
Killed in the crematories 
      By gas ……

I am old now
My time on earth is not long
 forget not the horrors of the Holocaust 
Soon all the survivors will be gone….