Holocaust

One person in six hasn’theard of the Holocaust, doesn’t know what it is, a planet of smoke andflames. Seventy year ago my relatives didn’t believe it was there, andthen they walked through the gate and under the slogan, Arbeit MachtFrei, and found they suddenly had a dismal view of God’s back frominside the barbed wire. So I look around, and though the times areterrifying, try to act like a kind of thunderstorm blue, like I can seeclouds in the shape of a woman’s mighty body and feel the rain thathasn’t fallen yet.

From Guest Contributor Howie Good

Howie's latest collections are I'm Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press. 

Old Mrs. Meyer

Johan returns with the potatoes for lunch. Mrs. Meyer, who lives opposite, opens her door. Though he’s eleven, the kind old lady still gives him candy.

However, seeing the two Gestapo officers with her, Johan hides.

“My father was German,” she says.

“The Reich is grateful,” they reply.

Soldiers arrive. Knocking down their front door, they drag out his parents and the family in the attic.

“Jew-loving Dutch swine!” says a soldier, spitting at his father.

Johan never sees them again.

His eyes meet Mrs. Meyer’s, peering out from between her curtains.

He never forgets her look of triumphant malice.

From Guest Contributor Ian Fletcher

Born and raised in Cardiff, Wales, Ian has an MA in English from Oxford University. He has had poems and short stories published in Schlock! Webzine, 1947 A Literary Journal, Dead Snakes, Short-story.me, Anotherealm, Under the Bed, A Story In 100 Words, Poems and Poetry, Friday Flash Fiction, and in various anthologies.