Name: Cara Borg Aquilina
Age: 15
Title: Obscure Gratitude
Vera & Olga Kriegel
The dead still standing in cattle cars
Sheer terror of threading on the deceased
Like steps
Aryan features moulded to faultlessness
As if God Himself crafted them for the White Angel
Laks was to meet her fortuity at the chambers
Alas, salvation bestowed upon her, her twin as benefactor
Off to the labs
Off to experimentation
Off to join the other 732 pairs of nameless souls
Off to conduct more genetic analysis
His fascination with the inheritance of the propensity to having twins
This lethal obsession
Laks indelibly recalls the removal of organs, no anaesthetic
Kriegel haunted by the injection to the heart, followed by dissection
The collection of eyes
Blue, brown, green eyes
“Staring at me like a collection of butterflies”
Peering down, to see others meeting a mutual destiny
Identity represented through numerals
January 26th 1945; guards were in frenzy
Petrol poured to obliterate concrete evidence
Soviets swarmed into the Death Factory the succeeding day
Kriegel calls to mind the troops; filming them
“They wanted to know what had happened to us “
Every detail was written down
“Regardless, our bodies alone spoke volumes.”
Mengele fled West, arrested by the US Army
Released as he lacked the SS blood group tattoo on his arm
Unaware that Todesengel was on a list of major war criminals
Worked as a farmhand in Bavaria, fled to Argentina, 1949.
Kriegel, Laks, all twins, victims to these unspeakable crimes
Cope with the appalling and unshakable ordeal as of present day
Trauma lurks within, inextirpable, inexpungible, inerasable
As you sow so shall you reap, He drowned following a stroke
Survivors do not manifest gratitude for His demise
But for seeing that justice has been served
And their lab rat identities have been long buried
Alongside the Angel of Death