Shema
by Primo Levi
You who live here secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider whether this is a man,
Who labors in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or a name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.
Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.
This poem, which is clearly an exhortation to remember the Holocaust, was written by Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. It's title comes from the Jewish prayer, the Sh'ma. This prayer is the first that most Jewish children learn. The words of the Sh'ma are:
Shema Yisroel, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.
"Hear, oh Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One."
Later passages in this prayer instruct the Jew to "keep these words upon your heart", "teach them to your children", recite them "when you sit in your home and when you walk on your way", "when you lie down and when you arise".
In the Sh'ma, G-d says that if the Jews do not obey his commandments, He will turn His face from them and they will be driven from their land. In this poem, Primo Levi is saying that if the Jewish people do not remember the Holocaust, they will be destroyed.