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At The Death Of Julius Streicher, Editor And Hater
Nuremberg's judges made the call,
and Julius Streicher took the fall.
But the process was not quick,
not for that colossal prick.
Dropped; the knot shifted, the rope
hung him there, just dingle-dangled,
and Julius?---fifteen minutes, strangled,
plenty of time to jerk and kick,
like some theatrical mime,
seemed (to him) a slow, long time:
dying without Christian hope,
death painful and agonized.
Who the "hial!" should be surprised?
He, who well deserved the sentence,
died without the least repentence.
Starward
Even this horrific death
Even this horrific death seemed too good for him. Your description and commentary is heart-stopping and masterful. A powerful and essential look at the aftermath of evil.
Thank you so much for
Thank you so much for visiting this poem, which was a dash-off after seeing a documentary about the Nuremberg verdicts and several of the executions were botched by the hangman, who apparently did not have good math skills for calculating "the drop." I was unable to muster up even the least bit of sympathy---for Streicher or any of the others. Some of those losers actually visited the death camps---ostensibly fir "inspection" purposes, but, I suspect, also to be entertained by the utter terror suffered by the victims. What is worse to watch?---death inflicted upon a victim, or the terror that victims experiences in those last moments before the infliction. I wondered that in regard to Streicher's last moments: like Von Ribbentrop, foreign minister, former champagne vendor, and the first to be executed, Streicher required almost a quarter of an hour to expire. And what went through his mind as he did the final dance---what terrors, both of his own boodily demise and of the disposition of his soul just moments after? After my own shock today, I was so much on edge that a poem like this seemed like the only thing I could write at the moment. Thanks for the kind comment.
Starward