Charred Faith - Leah Toebbe

In the beginning, there was faith
Faith-which is childish; trust-which is vain, and illusion-which is dangerous
Look at these men whom you have betrayed allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed and burned, what do they do? They pray before you! They praise your name!
Why should I sanctify His name? The almighty, the eternal and terrible master of the universe chose to be silent. What was there to thank him for?
I was the accuser, God-the accused
How could I say to him: Blessed be thou, Almighty, Master of the universe, who chose us to be tortured day and night
Bidding farewell to an audience of dying men
The child I was had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. the look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me. 
His eyes told of his unfulfilled hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 23, 2019 at 1:34 PM

    Nice poem Leah. I wrote my poem on the same subject and you probably did a better job than I did. You also focused on what Elie thought of himself and I thought it was a nice touch. Good job.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jameson M.October 26, 2019 at 8:23 AM

    Very good poem, the only thing I would say is maybe make the long lines into shorter sentences so that each short sentence impacts the reader even more. That is just a suggestion though because this is very well done.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post #4 - Marco

While studying the Holocaust, I have seen one important theme showing up in many stories: luck. People had no control over their own lives. Everything that went on around them was all based on luck. For every missed opportunity, they could change nothing. People didn't know what would happen to them, their belongings, or their family. Anything could happen- they could be given extra soup, or be forced to work more, or get sick and die. For example, in One Survivor Remembers, Gerda Weissman’s father makes her wear ski boots when she was taken away, which was silly at the time, as it was summer. However, these boots proved crucial to her survival, as during the death marches, she had warm boots while other girls were wearing sandals. Another example is, in Night, Elie and his father decide to move on in a death march rather than staying in the camp hospital they were in at Buna. However, they later learned that it was liberated by the Russian Army right after they left. Also, Elie ha...
Read more

Blog Post #1-James

This book is horrifying. The few pages after Elie gets off the train are the most intense ten pages of a book that I have ever read. Wiesel’s poetic writing captivates the brutality of Auschwitz. His poetic inclination and deeply rooted religious beliefs are presented from the beginning: “Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?”(Wiesel 4). He has such firm faith that he compares praying to breathing. With past hardships, he reasoned that they were tests from God to see if one is truly faithful, but after the terrors of the concentration camp he has doubt in God and does not pray with other men. “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”(Wiesel 33). This addresses a fundamental flaw in the concept of God. With all this suffering how could he exist? The Holocaust killed 11 million people. WWll killed 80 million. The god Elie prays too is proclaimed to...
Read more

Blog Post #4 - Sylvie

Before I read Night , before I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, before I watched One Survivor Remembers , and before I learned that 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust, I could never have imagined mankind cabable of such a horrendous act. I experienced such a whirlwind of emotions as I read Night ; Wiesel’s book made me feel so much sadness, but I also felt empowered. Reading Night made me question what I would have done if I was living during the time of the Holocaust. Would I have been as brave? Would I have survived. I can not even begin to fathom the tremendous amount of strength it took for the Jews to fight back and keep the will to survive. Knowing that people have gone through such loss and hardship, I feel as if I can do anything. In one of the most powerful statements from Night , Wiesel writes, “Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night on the train, the last night in Buna.” I find this statement to ...
Read more