Rain, Rain, Go Away
He hates the rain. More than anything. The way it gets worse, falling in larger and larger droplets. Almost like tears falling from the sky. But only if he is feeling poetic.
Some people find that very strange. Why hate the rain, they always ask. To them it's just another form of weather, like sun or snow. He just shakes his head and smiles in that sad way of his. They couldn't understand.
Because they weren't there. There in Poland, so long ago. But he remembers, just like it was yesterday. And he knows he can never forget.
It was raining that day. And cold. It seemed even colder once his parents had left. No, not left. After they were taken. They were split up: he went to one part of Auschwitz, his parents went to another.
He couldn't save them. He wasn't strong enough. Oh, he had tried. He had struggled with all of his might until the Nazis' nightsticks had gotten the better of him, bringing on darkness.
That was sixty years ago. Now he looks up at the sky and wonders why the rain falling on his face couldn't put out the fires in the kilns that incinerated so many of his people. His family and friends.
It has been sixty years.
Erik Lehnsherr still remembers.
And he still hates the rain.