I wrote something back in 2009 during my freshman year of high school. I was about 14 years old and knew nothing about the world yet and how things worked. Just by watching the news and seeing things happen in life, along with a quote from the Holocaust Museum, I decided to write something about the world as a whole. As I grew up, looking back on this piece I wrote, I realize that seven years later, it can still hold some water.

This song/poem is titled “Bear Witness.” My main influence drew from the I.D card booklet you receive whilst visiting the Holocaust Museum. On the front a quote reads, “For the dead and the living we must bear witness,” and as I walked through the museum, that quote ran through my head the entire time. I thought about what I meant and what it can still mean later on in life. I used it in that modern moment to capture what was going on at that time and in hindsight, what has happened already throughout history.

Over time, as I grew older and realized how things in the world worked (to a degree), I realize that this still reigns true. The quote that we must bear witness is still something that has solid meaning. It`s saying that as time goes on, we have to witness and take account of what is happening in our world and our lives, in hope that people will learn and try to make amends. Think, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” meaning that we should take what has happened in the past and try to do something different and better to make sure that what has happened will never happen again. We as a world have to bear witness to what is happening, for those are living and are dead, in order to help better the world and try to change how we think and are.

After a little research, I found the quote stems from a man by the name of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who was chairman of the committee that helped create and build the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. His full quote was,

"For the dead and the living, we must bear witness. For not only are we responsible for the memories of the dead, we are also responsible for what we are doing with those memories."

What I get from here is that we are responsible for what happens in the aftermath of what happens in life. We must preserve the memories of those who came before us and those are with us now. We must preserve these moments in time for others to see and know what has happened. This will help the world grow and evolve, or else all will be lost.

I didn't know any of the aforementioned information at the time of writing this, but I still think that what I have written is something that can still hold up to this day. This was my interpretation of what I knew to be at that moment in time, and it's a set of work that I can say I am proud of. If you'd like to discuss any of this I'd be more than happy to. With all that said, here is my original writing, "Bear Witness."

A war is being waged.

A war against the government.

Against you.

Against me.

We have no choice but to take part in it.

We have been in it since the day we came into the world.

Now look how its affected us.

Refuse.

Resist.

We try to walk away.

But we can’t.

For the dead.

For the living.

We must bear witness

To the pain.

To the bloodshed.

As the lives of the innocent are taken.

We must bear witness.

To the war that is affecting our lives.

We must bare witness to the affect.

We can’t live the way we want.

We're being told how.

I find it unfair.

But unfortunate life is never fair.

We are being robbed for all our hard work.

Will this war ever end?

Or will we live in turmoil?

What has happened to our nation?

We can’t turn away.

We must bear witness to the effect of the war.