the killings were easy to bear,
because we did not see them,
and because we believed in them.
Jews, ashes… there were many.
we sat on the porch sometimes and watched the big chimney, marveling.
that is efficiency, we said— another German virtue.

there were boys who used to have to shoot them.
stand them up on the brinks of their graves, and shoot them!
those boys went crazy. they were no good anymore.
so we developed a better way.
we reinvented the train, and the haircut,
and the workday and the roll call and spoons
and bowls and striped shirts and
chimneys,
and all of these things that became their life and death.
death as a way of life.
most of them died long before ever reaching the gas chamber,
or falling down from exhaustion.
they died on the inside, but kept walking around
for a few months or years afterwards
because we told them to.


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