Literature’s power lies in its ability to bring depth, immediacy and empathy through the words and into the heart. Images of the Holocaust haunt anyone who has seen black and white reels and photographs of the horror, the reality of an era that must never be forgotten.

Paul B. Jeneczko’s Requiem Poems of the Terezin Ghetto stands as a requiem to the people who lived, suffered, endured, died and carried the inhumanity of a shameful period in their hearts and literally tattooed to their arms, a number never to be diminished.

Terezin was originally a fortress town in Czechoslovakia. Hitler and his fellow Nazis turned it into, in their euphemistic terms, a collection and transport camp for the Jewish people. The original residents were “transported” out, and the Jewish prisoners began arriving.

The Nazi regime purported that was “a home for Jewish intellectuals and artists.” In truth it was a propaganda tool for the Third Reich. In the midst of the horrors of captivity there were musical performances, lectures and other artistic endeavors.

The reality was a different tale, one of woe.

Musicians who performed beautifully one night were packed into cattle cars the next, transported to the gas chambers. [They] …played as only the heartbroken can play.