WEBVTT

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"Theresienstadt Poem."

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Theresienstadt was
concentration camp

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in Czechoslovakia
near Terezin, to which

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for some reason or other, the
Germans sent children, mostly

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young children.

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And it was a stopover.

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The children went on
their way to Auschwitz

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and other extermination
camps in Poland.

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And there's a book that has
been published called I Never

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Saw Another Butterfly.

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It was a tragic book,
a terrible book.

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It's full of poems and
drawings by these children.

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A few grownups in the
camp to keep up morale

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held classes secretly--

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classes in poetry and
drawing, painting.

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And in 1944 at the approach
of the Western armies,

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the Germans slaughtered
many thousands

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of children, 15,000 children.

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Among them was a girl named Nely
Sílvinová who has a watercolor

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in this book.

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In your watercolor, Nely
Sílvinová your heart on fire

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on the gray cover of a
sketchbook is a dying sun

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or a flower the
youngest of the summer.

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The sun itself the grizzled
head of a flower throbbing

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in the cold dusk of
your last day on Earth.

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There are no thorns to be seen.

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But the color says thorns.

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And much else that is
not visible it says also,

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a livid wound at the horizon
it says Poland and winter.

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It says painful Terezin.

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It says SILVIN VI 25 VI 1944.

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And somehow above the light
body on its bed of coals

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it says spring.

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From the crest of
the street it says

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you can see the fields
brown and green.

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And beyond them the
dark blue line of woods

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and beyond that smoke.

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Is that the smoke of Prague?

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And it says blood.

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Every kind of blood.

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Blood of Jews.

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German blood.

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Blood of Bohemia and Moravia
running in the gutters.

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Blood of children.

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It says free at
last SILVIN VI 1944.

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The mouth of the womb it says.

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The penis of the commandant.

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The enraged color.

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The whip stock.

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The gun butt.

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It says.

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It says.

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It says.

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Petrified god.

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God that gave up the
ghost at Terezin.

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What does it say but itself?

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13 years of life and your
heart on fire, Nely Sílvinová.

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