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% Dachau
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% Reuben Thomas
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% Typeset 31/7/00; used poemnotes package 18/12/00; used my poem package
% 21/12/00; made HeVeA-friendly 11/2/02
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\documentclass[english]{article}
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage{a4,babel,palatino}
\usepackage[nonotes]{poem}

\pagestyle{empty}


\begin{document}
\begin{poem}
\title{Dachau}
\stanza*
A gravelled plain, low buildings—edged by trees— \\
Black iron limbs wired in symbolic pain; \\
Warm sun from a blue sky, a gentle breeze, \\
One plaque, five tongues, two words: ``never again''. \\

\stanza*
Inside, the endless beds in which they crammed, \\
Shared lockers for men stripped of property; \\
Their rest, to clean the barracks of the damned, \\
Their work, by grinding death to make them free. \\

\stanza*
Some found relief before the scheduled time: \\
They fled into the bullets and the fence, \\
Or died at roll call, falling out of line; \\
A few survived the end, small recompense. \\

\stanza*
Now nightmare with survivor slowly fades, \\
As of the barracks only graves remain. \\
A desperate shrine proclaims its deadly shades; \\
Elsewhere, fresh hands raise the walls once again. \\

\author{Reuben Thomas}
\poemdate{29th July 2000}
\end{poem}
\begin{notes}
  I went to Dachau with Tim Brown and Jeremy Marwell the morning after
  Clare Choir sang in Bach's St John Passion in a nearly-rebuilt
  church in Munich. The rest of the choir was to spend Saturday in
  Munich and Sunday in the Bavarian resort of Oberadorf, but I and a
  few others were booked to go back early. Bizarrely, while the others
  were all booked on an early morning flight, I wasn't to go until the
  early evening. Fortunately, I was able to make good use of the time,
  visiting Dachau on a warm day in late July.

  The black iron limbs are those of the central memorial; the middle
  figure in the sculpture, which makes limbs look like the electric
  fence, has its arms and legs in the shape of a left-handed swastika.
  The plaque, off to the left as you face the sculpture, is inscribed
  in Hebrew, English, French, German and Russian. It stands in front
  of the ashes of the unidentified bodies found by the Americans when
  they reached Dachau.

  Late in the war, the SS built new ``endless beds'', as the guide
  called them, in order to fit more prisoners into each building (they
  had reached a limit with six per ex-army bed). Dachau was a male
  camp, hence the reference to ``men''; five or six shared a locker
  containing whatever meagre property they might have left after
  giving up their clothes and valuables on entering the camp. The last
  line of the second verse refers, of course, to the motto, ``Arbeit
  macht frei'', inscribed over the entrance to the camp.

  Around the camp was an electrified fence; on the inside was a strip
  of grass, which was forbidden territory; anyone entering it would be
  shot by the guards. Many prisoners committed suicide by running onto
  it. Others died during roll-call in which 40,000 prisoners were
  counted three times.
\end{notes}
\end{document}
