Walking Forward to the Beginning (Book 5)

Хатынь

Silence

Bells toll every 30 seconds

No birds fly or chirp here

This place

Though peaceful now

Is a memorial

To unspeakable

Unimaginable

Horror

Хатынь

Khatin

Can't be translated

Into any other language

Bears witness

To crimes against humanity

The genocide

Of over 2 million Belarusians

During WWII

This place was chosen

To represent

Hell

1943

The Nazis invaded

The USSR

Belarus was hit first

Like the Black Plague

They swept through

The country

Burning everything

What made this place

Chill the soul

Was that

Хатынь

Was one of 186 villages

In Belarus

Where the people

Men, women, and children

Were burned alive

The bell tolls

Bring forth the spirits

That never left

Each clang

Jolts the heart and soul

Names of the murdered

Along with their ages

Adorn each bell stand

None of them got out

They never had a chance

The monsters

Made sure of that

So this place

Stands now

With an eternal flame

186 smaller monuments

Stand in formation

With the names

Of the villages burned

Their residents reduced to ash

At the entrance

A statue of an old man

Holding his dead son

Whom he could not save

Brings reality to light

A stone monument

With gated holes

Names every single

Ghetto and concentration camp

In Belarus

Along with the number

Of the massacred

Not just Jews

But everyone that

Stood in the way

Of Hitler and his

Terror war machine

The only life other

Then the visitors

Are the dragonflies and butterflies

That are the messengers from heaven

Never will forget

This place

Nor what took place here

Because as most know,

If history is forgotten

It tends to repeat itself

Times three

And we must not ever forget

We owe it to those that perished

So they know they did not

Die in vain

Learn the real history

Respect this history

Never to repeat this history