For Alfred Wödel
At the “Deadly Medicine Exhibit,”
I see you in a photograph,
a little boy on an examination table.
Your doctor, an expert in rickets,
holds x-rays of your bent bones
in his knowing hands.
He declared you a life not worth living!
How he ended it I do not know —
by injection of an overdose,
or the perfect euthanasia of zyklon B,
which was used in the Camps.
In his photo, he seems a humane man —
a professional —
could be my own father or me,
in our white coats, our doctors eyes.
How could he do this!
Little by little,
from Galton to Goebbels,
each small step taken,
till mastered by the blood,
it was done.
Footnotes
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Previously published at www.cmaj.ca