APRIL: THE CRUELLEST MONTH?

On 21 April 1942, during the German Occupation of the Channel Islands, three Jewish women, Marianne Grunfeld, Auguste Spitz and Therese Steiner, were deported to the French mainland and later taken to Auschwitz, where they perished in the gas chambers. 
In St Peter Port, on 9 August 2013 a plaque erected to their memory was vandalised. 

Click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-30811115
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-23630090

 THREE WOMEN


Shivering, departing Guernsey,
out on B-deck in damp sea-mist,

three names shouted from a check-list:
Jewish women, Deportees.

Each bewildered, not yet fearful:
surely this was just an error?
Why then, the arising terror?
Why then these young women tearful?

At a French departure station
in a regimented scramble,
boarding trucks, without preamble,
fear replacing consternation.

Through the night, awareness dawning,
they prayed, then, their journey ended,
from grey trucks, people descended
pale, to Auschwitz in the morning.

 

Click here: http://www.deathcamps.info/Auschwitz/Album1.htm