A Shoah Memory

2019 5th and 6th Grade Poetry Winner

A small boy
Of only 3
Cries and weeps but
No one hears him
His own family is much too distracted
By the Nazis who
Have come to take them away.

A regular morning in wartime
But not a regular morning at all
Alexandre is with his mother and grandmother
His father hiding in the empty apartment
On the very top floor
In the building
They had only been living in
For two months.

France was under Nazi control
Aron Ripp
Alexandre’s father
Had learned the Nazis were coming
To round up more Jews.

So he decided that he would hide
In the apartment on the very top floor
Where no one would be able to find him
And only he would hide
For he knew that the Nazis were taking men
And men only
But to his dismay
He was wrong.

And in the middle of the night
The Nazis came
Waking up woozy families
But not just that
They woke up fear
Anger
Sadness.

Alexandre’s family thought they would be fine
They thought the Nazis would never take anyone away
Who wasn’t a man
But the Nazis came anyway
With guns at the ready.

The Nazis forced open the door
They shouted out three names
Vera Ripp
Olga Lieberman
And my grandfather's 3-year old cousin
Alexandre Ripp.

Alexandre and his mother
were instructed to go outside
Olga was told to stay right where she was
And they were going to come back for her later.

She could have run
She could have hidden with Aron
She might have even been able to last through the war
But she stayed in her apartment
And waited until the Nazis came and took her.

Leaving Aron by himself
To watch the closest family he knew
Be taken away
Never to be seen by him again
And he would think
“I could have saved them.”

(Commemorating my first cousin 2 times removed, and his family. Alexandre, Aron, and Vera Ripp, along with Olga Lieberman.)