Beautiful sunshine, a lovely stream, blue sky
a seemingly idyllic setting, majestic and wide
—but in reality a dark hellish nightmare inside
How could there be a place like Dachau (Dah-how)
A concentration camp of terror
Where many lived their last in horror?
Just how can people torture one another?
Give them too little to eat,
And shoot them as they try to flee?
Hungry, cold, demoralized
How can someone idly stand by
—and just watch people die?
Locked in tiny standing chambers,
Unable to sit or lay down
–angry officers barge in and frown
Hurting from torture, alone in darkness, soon to fade away
Hope disappears, insanity comes, real or supposed suicide
Soon to be just another number who died
Suffering, pain, tears all gone
People beaten, hung from poles,
But the deepest of wounds are in their souls
Typhoid, bruises, pests
Fierce dogs chasing, no dignity at all
Too weak to stand for hours on end–they fall
Daily degradation dissolves all desires
Death no longer a surprise
Loved ones far away notified–of lies
Hangings in front of the cremation ovens
Bodies stack up, no coal to burn the gruesome piles
Gold extracted from the corpses’ teeth—how vile!
Why did people let such evil go on?
How could these things be? Didn’t people see?
And yet, we can now ponder this catastrophe …
An innocent Man stumbling up a lonely hill,
whipped, taunted, laughed at, spit upon, yet He did not fuss
Also hanging, suffering immensely— but on a cross…and for us
For us who give our fellow humans too little to eat,
Who shoot people with our words or actions
And idly stand by as the masses worldwide die
For us who frown at the beggar on the street,
a “disturbance” to our conscience, someone unclean
a nuisance, a pest whom we wish we had not seen
For us who daily degrade the Universe Creator
To a make-me-feel-good genie who should answer our requests
Whom we only want to talk to if He’ll make us feel “blessed”
For us it was that Jesus came to die, carrying our sin, rising again
That we might greet Him in the sky, when to heaven He calls us in
Making our life here and now mighty in Him and yet…
Yet, it is I who like the soldier does nothing as people starve
As they daily suffer the torture of life, weary, sick, alone
little chance to succeed in the world’s slums or rural fields they bleed—with no hope
It is I who hoard the good Bread from the materially wealthy around me
Whose lives are empty, whose souls are lost, who need an eternal Someone
It is I who let days go by and just watch people die—despite all I’ve been delivered from
How many souls from that wretched camp entered heaven?
How many people today am I helping to find the way?
How many of those around me are headed to a place far worse than Dachau?
And how, how could there be a place like Dachau?
Because of sin, our sin—that’s how.
© Lukas Westevy
2005
Munich, Germany
after visiting Dachau Concentration Camp