poem “One May Day: Germany”, a poem about spending a brief amount of time in one country and seeing all of the differences you can before moving on, By Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers

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One May Day: Germany
Janet Kuypers
1/17/24
We left Hitler’s home country
to go to Germany’s Dachau, to see one
of the first concentration camps in existence.
Drank beer on the train ride from Munich
(something Hitler would frown upon), and after
seeing Washington D.C.’s Holocaust Memorial —
complete with a train car, a Warsaw ghetto walkway,
glass bins of collected hair brushes, shoes —
I was stoked for the impact of actually being there.
But once was passed under an Arbeit macht frei sign
we walked into vast blank halls with only
occasional spots of original chipping paint.
We’d walk from room to room, each containing
only large hanging posters with occasional images
of data in German and in English. You couldn’t feel
the gravity of life for prisoners in these camps.
Only when we got to the last room and saw
a scale model of the entire grounds as it was
during the Holocaust, well, everywhere we walked that day
was only about one fifth the size of the camp.
That was the only way I saw the monstrous size
of this monstrosity. Later sat at a Munich bar,
and the old German men yelled at us in German
when an American-sounding song played
on the jukebox. I didn’t even know where the jukebox was,
and the bartender yelled at the regulars in German
that she was the one who chose that song.
But looking back, I have to admit
that it was cool to be yelled at in another language
from men on the other side of the planet.

Copyright © Janet Kuypers.

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