Charlotte M
The roots of this forest run deeper than most,
They stretch back not only through time,
But in hate and in death and in bloodshed
A forest was born from a crime.
This crime was itself a collection,
An assembly of evil and vice,
That condemned souls to death by the thousand
That played God in control of a life.
When some of those souls dared to challenge this “god”
And fight so that they may be free,
They ran towards the trees at the edge of the woods
And were hunted as they tried to flee.
Behind was a camp left in ruins,
A memory of violence and pain,
And though the walls that had held had been broken,
Proof of the crime still remained.
To cover the tracks that the Nazis had left,
They were ordered to start planting seeds,
To fill up the hole that Sobibor made,
They created a forest of trees.
It’s true that these trees, they may help us to breath,
But the forest was meant to erase,
The seeds, they were planted to cover the ground
To engulf and to bury this place.
The roots of this forest, they rise from the ashes,
Of sisters and fathers and friends.
The roots of this forest don’t hide all its past,
That the Nazis did so hope to cleanse.
The roots of this forest are strong in the ground
The branches, they stretch up so high,
The trees that were planted don’t hide all those souls,
They lift up their lives to the sky.
The roots of this forest run deeper than most
They stretch back not only through time,
But in hate and in death and in bloodshed
A forest was born from a crime.
When asked about the inspiration for this work, Charlotte said, “This poem is inspired by the film Escape from Sobibor, which tells the story of one of the biggest prisoner uprisings during the Holocaust that took place at Sobibor death camp. The film closes with a comment about the Nazis attempt to cover up the camp’s remains by planting trees. I considered this fact in conjunction with the idea that, when the prisoners were trying to escape during the uprising, a forest promised some guise of safety. In a class I took on Holocaust memory at NU, we talked a lot about the power of sites of atrocity that don’t have much, if any, physical remains left behind. Can the earth itself hold memory?”
