Munich Hofbrau House

Hitler's ghost still haunts
These somber halls,
The brassy band playing
The marching songs,
Old white-haired men
Dream of past glory yet,
Remembering their Fuhrer
In his shining day,
And they, in black uniforms,
Sun gleaming on their bayonets,
The rulers of the world
In a thousand year Reich,
Shattered in five years,
With fifty million dead.
They drown their sorrows
In their steins,
Defeated, broken men,
In drunken stupor,
They talk of all
That might have been,
And I, a Jew, survivor
Of the Holocaust,
Proud member
Of an ancient tribe,
The people of Jesus,
Moses, Marx, Spinoza,
Freud and Einstein,
The intellectual elite,
Creative spirit of this world,
Who outlasted them all,
Would only pity those broken men,
Were it not for the six million
Of my brethren killed by them,
And silently I praise my God
Who cursed their fate...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2006 Alfred Charasz