Liberating the death camps, slave labor camps and Stalags brought both horror at what had happened and hope for a better day.

 

On Holocaust Remembrance Day I’m thinking about my dad and the role he played in WWII as an infrantryman in the 13th Armored Division. Liberating the death camps, slave labor camps and Stalags brought both horror at what had happened and hope for a better day. We need to remember how close the civilized world came to collapse. Here is a poem that he only found the courage to write at the age of 87, a full 60 years after he came home. 

Deliverance

The final days were coming in that great and awful war.

We were as tired as men can get – we’d come so fast, so far,

As we’d pursued the enemy, the fallen “supermen”

Who’d lost their evil grip on Earth, to yield to common men.

 

As our nervous riflemen approached the death camp’s gate

They paused before that tragic place of malice, death and hate,

Then found they had no need to fear – the craven guards had fled.

They found inside a hideous Hell of lame and sick and dead.

 

Then, one by one the foul camps fell, until they all were free

And many who were doomed to die gained life and dignity.

And we who helped in freedom’s fight had cause to celebrate

Our modest parts in that great act that changed so many’s fates.

 

We’re grateful for the Destiny that put us in their way

And were the weapon in God’s hands that drove the Beast away

To free the many innocents incarcerated there

From the vile obscenities that they’d been forced to bear.

 

We weep for this great tragedy, contrived by evil men

And pray the world will never see such heartlessness again.

 

©2005 Adrian Godfrey

 

To recognize the part that the 13th Armored Division played in the liberation of 5 “death camps, 5 prisoner of war camps, and 3 slave labor camps at the end of World War II.