Humanity Lost

I freeze,

And fall to my knees.

The earth is cold tonight, my sight

Is sorrowed as I place my hands on its frozen surface,

No furnace to warm me, but bereft.

Here, on the borrowed hour

Of my death.

The frost seeping through my clothes

Chills my bones, I am lost here, alone.

The precipice in front of me is wide, and deep,

But full. I keep my head dipped,

Knowing they watch me

And mock me.

A pathetic excuse for man

I am; a parasite they long to vanish,

To banish and go from these lands that were free

Not so long ago….

How did I end up here?  Such fear.

What evil have I wielded in this life

Or the last

That justifies my final moment?

I have seen the past and the present, but no future,

No more will I stand as I grasp at my knees

On the floor, in the dirt that consumes me

And is ready to lose me to the worms

In the bullets and blood,

Left to die and to rot

In the mud.

Soon now, near obsolete,

A front row seat

To my own annihilation.

Devastation, wiped clean, buried.

When I, the very last in 'sin'

Of twenty-eight thousand lost,
Falls in.

I sink further into the soil.

Turmoil.  Lingerer.

The harbinger of death

Extends my suffering,

Shuffling behind.

For the sheer joy to witness my distress,

They aggress.

I hear the serpent tongues licking the air,

Tasting my fear;

Rejoicing.

I peer once more into my open tomb.

To fall soon, I see my place

Between the face of the old and the young,

The father, the son,

The well and the weak,

The proud and the meek,

Innocent, all, now done.

I feel god smile,

Thanking me for my presence

But turning away, shielding his eyes.

Even he denies that man can wield such brutality,

For my finality, even the heavens

Cannot stand.

It is said that only the dead will see
The end of war - a small salvation,
In the face of a nation destroyed
By the passing of law.

It seems though I will live long enough to witness

The perdition of sanity

And the destruction of hope,

At the end of humanity,
Here, on the very horizon of my life.

I hear the click of the barrel,

His apparel rustles at the effort.

The cold steel, real now,

Presses against my temple,

And chills my soul.

My skull, braced.

I close my eyes

And whisper ‘please’

But useless these words are,

In such hatred, such darkness,
As everything,
Suddenly and permanently passes,

Into nothing.

Copyright © 2011 by Simon Austin 

Based upon and inspired by the photograph 'The Last Jew in Vinnitsa'

In summer 1941, in their push to invade Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler’s German army marched through Ukraine. On July 19th, Vinnitsa, Ukraine was captured by German troops. Some 28,000 Jews were massacred by the Nazis. According to the census data of 1926, 21,800 Jews lived in the region which means the entire Jewish people were exterminated in Vinnitsa.

This famous picture, inscribed on the back of the photo as of the Last Jew in Vinnitsa, was taken by a German SS Soldier. The man, thought to have been the very last to be executed in Vinnitsa, is seen kneeling in front of a mass grave, his haunting face and hollow, distracted eyes became symbolic of the Holocaust.  Present in the background of the photo are members of the German Army, the German Labor Service, and the Hitler Youth.