My Black Messiah

The Holocaust, a time of great darkness in the history of humanity. The time where thousands were hurt and millions slain. When even your closest friends became enemies. When you would whisper help but no one would hear. The pain and suffering and no mercy to the weak. Only the rich and the Aryans survived. Sonia Weitz was unfortunately a Jew during WW2. And yes she went through the concentration camps, starvation and torture. She had most of her family taken away from her, only her and her sister survived from her family. So we watched a video where she was talking about her experiences and she read us a few poems and the one that touched me the most is 'My Black Messiah'.

First of all 'Messiah' is known as the savior of humankind for the Jewish religions and the Christians. I could really connect to the parts of this poem. I cannot say that I know what it felt like to be in her position because I have not gone through all the abuse that she had been through but I can connect to being in pain and after a long time a person comes and saves me. When I was little I would be the youngest in the house so I would get lonely because everyone had something to do and didn't want to play with me. So I would go out to the balcony, sit down and watch all the people walking by. Then I would stick my head in between the rods on the balcony. It would fit in easily but after a while when I wanted to leave my head got stuck. I pulled it back and my head got squashed and it really hurt. I started to cry. After what seemed like hours my grandma came rushing and gently took my head out. So I kind of understand the relief although mine would not have been as great as hers!

When she was reading it out in the video I wondered what the soldier must have felt when he walked into that cabin. "A flood of devastating pain, his innocence forever slain." What he must have felt when he saw all those people. There stick thin bodies, eyes gaunt. Their bodies gone through months of exhaustion, beating and starvation. More than half of them sick, slowly wasting away. All cramped into such a small space in such gruesome conditions. The pain he must have felt for those people. The guilt that his country let this happen for so long! What had gone through his mind, what did he think of Hitler or the Nazis? And when he locked eyes with Sonia, the girl who is half dead just trying desperately to stay alive for her sister. Those big sad eyes and what did he think? What emotions did he feel? What did he see in those eyes? It just makes me wonder!