Nuremberg’s Excuse

They stood in rows,
polished boots on trial,
faces chiseled from stone.
Their chorus rang with excuses:
“I was only following orders.”
Each syllable crashed like a gavel —
empty,
hollow,
straining to plug the silence
left by those who screamed
and could not be heard.

Misguided loyalty wears many masks —
duty, family, patriotism —
but beneath the façade
lurks fear’s decay,
submission’s slow poison.
These men, these soldiers,
saluted flags,
obeyed voices,
marched to a rhythm
that crushed every whisper
of a conscience still alive.

Where did the line lie?
In the ash that drifted from the sky,
in the shadows of the trains?
In the cold precision
of clipboards and camps,
where life was reduced
to a number,
to smoke?
They crossed it so many times,
they forgot it was ever there.

Loyalty without reason
is a blade with no handle,
cutting both victim and wielder.
Those who obeyed
didn’t see the blood
till it stained their hands
for all time.

But history does not forgive.
It knows no mercy for “I didn’t know.”
The trials weren’t for the dead alone;
they were for the living,
a warning carved in stone:
to bow without question
is to betray the soul.

The judges spoke of justice,
but justice never cradled
the mothers who wept,
nor reclaimed the fields
that swallowed bones.
Instead, they offered a mirror —
the reflection of men
who traded away their humanity
for the false comfort
of obedience.

Nuremberg’s trials enshrined
that loyalty offers no excuse,
orders grant no absolution.
To follow blindly
is to walk in shadow,
footsteps merging
with the darkest corners
of what it is to be human.

Because in the end,
the only thing standing
between a human
and the abyss
is the courage
to say no.