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I want to tell of a fireplace,
not of the one which in the guest rooms of the bourgeoisie
warms the feet with pleasant fire
and where the flames noisily play.
I want to tell of another fireplace,
which was built
in the terrible concentration camp.
It is called crematorium here,
in it the sick or the weak are burned.
This fireplace-crematorium burns day and night,
its red flames climb the sky.
In it the lost mother
or daughter are burned,
with the black smoke their life flies away!
Hundreds of thousands of people have gone this way,
they had been taken to the gas chambers
Mothers, fathers, even little children.
Hundreds at once have been killed there,
with their bodies the chimney was
heated each time anew.
The hot flame mingled with the smoke
Thus cooked the innocent human blood.
But from the same flame
revenge was also born.
Alexandra Sokowa: Crematorium (1944)
Original language: Russian