Gold

 

.

But maybe I should offer no apology.

Poetry has the right, responsibility even, to deal with all that is human: to communicate, to share emotion, to stimulate thought and to help understanding – along with  much more of course.

So listen then for a moment to a man, normal in many ways, convinced of his own normality and decency, yet deeply involved in evil.

Evil is so complicated.

Horrific actions can be justified; they may not even be seen as such by the perpetrator, when evil is all around and worse things are being done...

Gold

 

My name is Hellinger.  I mine for gold.

Not for me those specks of dust

flushed down some distant stream,

nor heavy work with spade and hammer

upon unyielding rock.  The gold I find

has been refined – I leave it to others

to fire the furnace.  My finished gold

falls in little balls to rattle in my bowl.

 

No fight, no piracy – this is not stealing,

rather rescue. No gold rush here –

this good old gold, cold in its warmth,

lies waiting for my forceps.

I am skilled in the extraction.

The vein I work is soft and easy

I know exactly where to look –

unlike an ignorant prospector

 

which is not me – I am informed.

I inflict no pain, commit no crime,

and contribute to the greater good.

I even feel a certain reverence

and some respect for how my gold

once made good those cracks and crevices.

Meanwhile I mine abandoned treasure

in my particular professional way.

 
Dr Martin Hellinger, a dentist at Ravensbruck, joined the SS early on, rising to the rank of Hauptsturmfuhrer.  He argued at his war crimes trial that ‘though it hurt one’s feelings of reverence’ he had committed no indictable offence.  The gold he extracted from the freshly executed was sent to the Reichsbank.  He served a prison sentence and returned to years of successful dental practice.