"You made a choice"
The prosecutor said sternly,
Raising his coarse voice,
And she listened,
"But I was a guard"
She said,
"My duties were not to be barred"
She thought back to the eerie night,
The long death march,
With its evident destination in sight,
She had to maintain order,
And the Jews were to die,
Inside the locked church's border,
"You never opened the door"
"You watched them suffer"
"You heard their cries, their sore"
Thumping his words, the prosecutor goes on,
Staring at her reflection on the granite floor,
She wonders, What else could have she done?
Lost in her memory she wandered away,
To the orphaned girl,
Strolling on Berlin streets in her melancholic sway,
To the young woman,
The conductor in a tram car,
Working to answer hunger's summon,
Poverty's cruel fate,
Deprived of life's pleasures,
Unfortunate and illitereate,
It was blatant and plain,
A choice was never to be made,
But to accept and not complain,
"The SS is recruiting",
Someone had said,
"They are looking for guards",
"These people deserve an answer!"
Demands the prosecutor,
Killing her reminiscence,
And there she stood,
Before the law,
Trying to remember if she could
Have opened the door and saved them,
But she was just a guard,
And her duties were not to be barred.
