When we were in Krakow, Poland once, we visited the "Plaza of the Heroes of the Ghetto", the site of mass shootings of elderly and infants. The Empty Chairs monument erected in this square was inspired by a ghetto survivor's story of having witnessed schoolchildren, evicted from their school, carrying their chairs through the streets. I wrote this poem after visiting this memorial to the Holocaust.
Empty Chairs
Children walked the sidewalk that day
Chairs above their heads
Like chains keeping them in line
On a strange field trip of kind
It was the hour when lessons were taught
But ethics and truth were not
Did fear fill their eyes?
Was it palpable?
Did they chatter unknowingly?
I cannot comprehend
What they felt in the end
The mind, the emotions have limits
This hour and every one chiming, in remembrance
Empty chairs line the square
Once soaked in red
Life-shattered, dream-spattered pools
The aged, the youngest, the child
Whose life would have spanned
Even till now
It was a second ago
Do you understand? It was a second ago
When madness tried to rule the world
Can we derive meaning from vile hatred?
A senseless slaughter of innocents
Being’s right cries Evil
Evil demands Justice
Justice embodies
Love and Goodness – Vinco Vici Victum
Plaza of the heroes of the ghetto
This is why we must remember, to stop its recurrence
So there will never be
Another empty chair
