Almost seventy years ago
it smelled like rain.

September 1st, 1939
country by country,
region by region,
through the 8th of May, 1945
5, 750, 000
Such a total can never be complete.
infants and babies
by the thousands
murdered
before their births could be recorded
for the sake of statistics
the autumn of 1941
By the thousands
remote villages in Poland
added to the deportation trains
without numerical note
being made to their existence
or their fate.
Despite half a century of research
several hundred communities throughout Europe
bear witness to monstrosities
with plaques that read
"The exact fate of this community
is unknown."

Germany 160,000 recorded and identified.
Norway 728 recorded and identified.
Finland 11 recorded and identified.
Denmark 77 recorded and identified.
Holland 106,000 recorded and identified.
Belgium 24,387 recorded and identified.
Luxembourg 700 recorded and identified.
France 83,000 recorded and identified.
Austria 65,000 recorded and identified.
Italy 8,000 recorded and identified.
Crete 260 recorded and identified.
Greece 65,000 recorded and identified.
Albania 200 recorded and identified.
Macedonia 7,122 recorded and identified.
Yugoslavia 60,000 recorded and identified.
Hungary 200,000 recorded and identified.
Czechoslovakia 217,000 recorded and identified.
Ruthenia 60,000 recorded and identified.
Thrace 4,221 recorded and identified.
KOS 120 recorded and identified.
Rhodes 1,700 recorded and identified.
Libya 562 recorded and identified.
Bessarabia 200,000 recorded and identified.
Bukovina 124,632 recorded and identified.
Soviet Union 1,000,000 recorded and identified.
Poland 3,000,000 recorded and identified.
Danzig 1,000 recorded and identified.
Memel 8,000 recorded and identified.
Lithuania 135,000 recorded and identified.
Latvia 80,000 recorded and identified.
Estonia 1,000 recorded and identified.

The programme was designed.
Dachau the grand opening.
persecution, expulsion,
book burning,
racism, annexations,
Kristallnacht,
refugees rejected after crossing the Atlantic,
the land of the free was fresh out of freedom.
the Ghettos,
hunger, starvation,
dehumanization,
the Einsatzgruppen
massacres,
deportations,
slave labor, infantization,
death camps, death marches,
human experimentation,
We must remember the details
Now more than ever
Bearing witness to the past
We must protect our future from the present.

Nashi and the elimination manifesto
sovereignty of country
in the name of modernization
the integrity of the motherland
An integrity freckled
with book burnings
violent attacks
free university (for members only)
discrimination,
racism,
persecution,
all the while the unaffiliated police
politely standing by
watching the first chapter repeat itself
while Stalin's held the hero.

It smells like rain in the motherland.
The clouds are dark.
A storm is on the way.

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