Those walls

It was the scratches that did it.

Screams writing in time, recording
history’s horrible hatred as desperation
grapples to escape man’s inhumanity
to man, and woman, and child.

It wasn’t the hair, or the shoes
or the trinkets, or laces or the
piled bunks in rooms crammed tight
with pain and suffering,
foreshadowing what was still to come.

Nor was it the oven now quenched,
or the hole in the roof that
delivered the poison that got to me
as much as those scratches did.

It was the scratches. Crying out.
Witness statements.
Humanity in inhumanities’
prison. It was the scratches.
They scraatched my heart.
Scarred as deep as those walls.

It was the scratches.

©Stuart Patterson 2018

Tracy and I went to Poland earlier in the year. Whilst there we visited the Aushwitz concentration camps.

It was an overwhelming time. So much of what we seen and felt there brings home the horror more than any text book or movie or documentary ever can.

In camp 1, we went into the crematorium and, as we stood at the area that the Nazis crammed human beings into in order to drop in their Zyklon-B gas, I saw the deep scratches torn into the wall.

It got to me.

More and deeper than anything else I saw on that day, these scratches torn into the wall got me. Every scratch a desperate scar in time of a very real human being suffering at the hands of grotesque humanity. Every scatch shouted their pain through the years, echoing and reverberating till I could almost hear them.

It was the scratches.

Mans’ intolerance of anything he disagreed with finding its fulness in the passionate hatred that sought to wipe out the hands that wrote those scratches.

It was the scratches.

This POST is part of a wider collection to show the journey that would eventually lead me to the cross of Jesus Christ, my personal redemption, and my journey of faith afterwards. If you would like to know more of my story, please click on my “About” page and take it from there.

Alternatively, you can visit the Media Links page and see a short visit done by BBC Radio Scotland for an interview I did there.

I have now released an early edition of my story, Completing the Tenner.

I have also published two poem books: Simply Jesus and Five Weeks in May

You can purchase these direct from Amazon (please use Amazon Smile link below and Amazon will contribute to ECC at no cost to you), They are all available in both Kindle and Paperback formats.

Or you can buy directly from me. Email me directly to arrange this.

There is now a devotional aimed at new Christians called “Take a seat“ this is available direct from me.

If you or someone you love, needs help with the Christian response to addiction, or if you would just like to know more or need hope, please click on one of the following:

The Haven
Teen Challenge Strathclyde
Teen Challenge UK
Teen Challenge Global
Street Connect
Bethany Christian Trust
Jumping Jacks Outreach
Cornerstone Assemblies of God, Maryland
Broken Chains Ayr
Easterhouse Community Church
Stuart Patterson