History of Sorts

The estimates of how many people were murdered vary, but it is widely estimated that it is 11 million, of which 6 millions were Jewish. I believe that number is greater, but for the context of the following poem I will go with the number of 11 million.

If I cried a single tear for each of the 11 million victims of the Holocaust, I would shed 15,840 liters of water — enough to fill 150 bathtubs or 792 buckets.

Eleven Million Tears

If I cried a single tear
For every soul lost in that fear,
Eleven million tears would fall—
A flood for those who had no call.

Fifteen thousand liters deep,
Each drop a name, a wound, a weep.
One hundred fifty bathtubs brimming full,
Yet still, the silence would feel dull.

For how can water tell the tale
Of trains that groaned on iron rails?
Of shoes in piles, of broken glass,
Of names erased as ages pass?

They were mothers, children, sons—
Their stories stilled before they’d run.
Not just six million Jews alone,
But five million more, unknown:
The Roma, queer, the disabled too,
The dissident, the rebel few.

Their lives, not numbers—each a flame
Snuffed out, yet whispering their name.

No tear can cleanse what hate began,
But still we weep, because we can.
For memory is water too,
It carves through stone, it seeps on through.

So cry, not just in pain or guilt,
But so their names are never spilt
From history’s cup, from time’s slow stream—
Let memory live, let mourning dream.

Eleven million shadows cast,
Yet light still fights to hold them fast.