Written for Holocaust Remembrance Day

They came at dawn with lists and loaded trains,
the air still sweet with spring, the children small,
their laughter silenced by the iron chains
that bound them to the cattle cars’ grim call.

Six million names erased in smoke and flame,
mothers clutching infants, fathers torn apart,
the learned, the simple, all reduced to same
ash drifting over fields that once held heart.

O Lord of mercy, hear the buried cry
that rises still from pits and unmarked stone—
not vengeance, but the truth that will not die,
the witness borne through generations known.

We stand as one before their scattered dust:
Never again. In memory we trust.

May their light endure, and may we carry it forward.