(A re-post for International Holocaust Day.  In 2011 John Demjanjuk, a retired car-worker in Ohio originally from the Ukraine,  was deported to and convicted in Germany of war crimes he committed while working as a guard for the Nazis at Sobibor concentration camp. It has always struck me that our precious principles are cheap until upholding them comes at a cost).

 

They took us near Vinnytsia in 1941

Supply lines long since severed, ammunition all but gone.

 

We numbered 97 boys, all from Podillia’s lands

They shot a half of us right then as we raised our hands.

 

They ordered us to strip our dead beneath that wintery sun

I’ve asked myself a thousand times, “What would you have done?”

 

They shipped us north to Poland along with thousands more

And onwards to this barbed-wire Hell that’s known as Sobibor.

 

Inside these walls of horror there is no Wrong, no Right

Just wake at dawn; make sure that day you live to sleep at night.

 

And do just as they bid you to, as all of us have done

I’ve asked my friends a thousand times, “What would you have done?”

 

I’ve ripped the women’s clothes off to show the guards their tits

Then hauled the bodies on the cart and heaved them in the pits.

 

I’ve beaten aged Jews to death to give the guards their fun

And begged their souls a thousand times, “What would you have done?”