Lyrics Deny - Josh Martinez

Deny

So this is war, more blood poured from the fountain
As I’m counting on the cold hand
Of those that abstain and demand
More ground gained from the crosses that we follow into battle
I swallow in the whole Earth rattle
It was all too real from the moment that I peeled
My steel cap back
And saw the black knife fade into first light
Some fat balding man had the clever insight
That might makes right so under infrared sight
We steadily advance
I raised from my crouched stance
As boards marked the time I danced through lines of dead men
Who’ve been forever left behind and lie with their own kind
But I turn my mind off, desensitizing
I find myself surmising on how I can plant my flag upon the horizon
So glory finds me and I can be
History’s first living soul on the beaches of Normandy
And slay me a thousand Germans
Cause revenge is burning hot as pistol shot and I can smell bodies
Rotting on both sides of the divide but the tide of the battle has turned
The good guys have returned
So we succeed in the beachhead but success is relative
Relatively high numbers of dead blood stained human remains
But the Nazis fled so we advance into France
We meet the underground resistance behind enemy lines, making good distance
At the insistence of our leaders
We follow up on every lead, even a tree can be a trap
But one look at the map showed the Germans were withdrawing
Citizens were applauding
As they plotted how to pay back the citizen assassins
We started liberating towns to the ticker-tape tirades
Of humans too tired to wage war anymore
It looked like war had but a few months left before we could all rest
And go home to our families
But then we heard rumor of a place
Where an entire human race was taken and laid to waste
A camp where crazed experiments take place
And rows of corpses overflowed mass graves
There were things to be seen and turn you to burn inside
The soldiers were told to see with their own eyes
So I went to see it so I could explain without laying blame
History’s made a name of stories so I will call it as I see it
I see fit to record it so the truth cannot be distorted
But I must warn you, truth is cold
Souls stolen from right under the skin
A prison where inmates' fate was wrapped and lay
The feat past the gates and doctors decided
Whether you were pesticide-ed or provided with a tattoo used to ID you
When death from exposure overcame you
So I walked past the gates and saw plain brick buildings
And then the real world faded
«I hated every breath:» the words to express what I saw when Auschwitz fell
A living hell, you couldn’t tell
The living dead from the skeletons enveloped in this valley of death
The stink of charred flesh made my breath catch
We couldn’t match the millions
Of dead civilians to what we had believed to be humans
«How could this happen?»
I asked my captain and for a moment
This proponent of atonement just shook his head
Cause it was best left unsaid
But being Jewish on the other side of the divide meant I knew my history
Without having to face its wrath
The path of six million goes way beyond the math
See Poland fell first and Jews were the first to feel it
Herded into units by perverted Germans who used their loose liberties
To sexually abuse and misuse in full view of the camera
But it never made the news
Cause most Poles agreed that all Jews were infected
They infested every stock-invested bank
And every government think-tank had at least a Jew or two
So who am I to play the fall guy?
When I cast my eye on the neighbor’s grass
Where it’s truly greener on the other side
I must confide that I hate Jews just about as much as the Germans do
So when the burning smoke chokes out the air and all I smell is burning hair
I’ll turn a blind eye and comply
With every single lie that you make us recite so we won’t ask any questions
I’m just an average citizen
See many Europeans felt that Jews were just pollution
A problem finally solved by the Final Solution
Where Communists, Jews, gypsies, and handicapped queers
All became the target of irrational fears
Fed by the flames of state-sponsored propaganda
And that’s when one man began to expand
His theories of inferiority and spread it like a virus
So Jews were enclosed in ghettoes completely frozen from contact
Beyond that flat where fifteen people slept back to back
Where liberty and property were stolen
On the grounds that Jews were the chosen scapegoats
So oats were torn and the horns sounded
As the hatred rose from town to town the world was astounded
That the Nazis would treat some citizens so ruthless
But without documented proof the accusations were toothless
And since the persecuted were Jewish
The world watched and did nothing
See hate was fanned into obsession
Obsessed by the extermination of a nation founded by religion
So a nation created in fear and xenophobia
Proceeded to eliminate sanction by the state
But bullets were too expensive and didn’t kill fast enough
Plus the mass graves made it hard to deny
The use of slaves digging their own graves
So science was used and compounds were created
To make the killing less anticipated and more efficient
A pesticide called Zyklon B was used
To see hundreds of strangers into the gas chambers
Which they were told were the showers
The children, women, and elderly must have been smelly
Cause immediately upon entry they were all sent to the showers
So the world watched and somebody had to know
That six million Jews went to camp and just didn’t come home
As I stare down the tracks
Where trains packed humans in cattle cars behind steel bars
The motto of this camp attracts my eye, it says: «Arbeit Macht Frei»
Meaning «Work will make you free» but all those who died inside
Probably never saw the irony
This place had an evil feeling as we roamed building to building
Sights before my eyes, each one the less appealing
A room piled to the ceiling with gold filling teeth
The next filled with shaved human hair
Soon to become some German chair and plush sofa
Suffocating stench as I clench my teeth, for what I reached next:
I saw ten huge chimneys burning gas, Jews to ashes
A whole section dedicated to storing glasses
Confiscated from the dead for resale
I felt frail and had to leave this hell or be consumed by its spell
I’ve long since left but I consider it my duty
To bring this tragedy to the attention of a country
Who pats itself on the back for helping in the occupation
And bring freedom to a federation of the oppressed
But Canada must be undressed
Its dirty laundry put to rest
Our country frowned on the slaughter, perpetrated
A crime so anti-human we were all left exasperated but it faded over time
And if you think Denmark smelled rotten soon our feelings weren’t forgotten
But I will never forget that this nation did nothing
And when our government feigned sadness they must have been bluffing
Cause before and during the war all the way into the fifties
Canada’s immigration policy was just as clear as any:
One Jew is one Jew too many
So how can we condemn when we had a chance
To open up our arms and give our home to the survivors?
Instead we gave the red carpet to ex-Nazi storm riders
Whose record checks seemed to have been forgotten
At the border in the disorder
Why do you think we still keep finding out
The Nazis are our neighbors fifty years later?
Ask me if I think we should’ve done more
It’s all said and done with now so what the fuck for?
My task and all I ask is that you never forget
Cause those who forget: history will repeat it
The Nazis were defeated yet the lies live on and spawn
In the ignorance of those whose motives reap it
And claim death counts were made up as if we needed to exaggerate
But I saw how hate could make right-thinking people deviate
When they create excuses for the nooses and reasons for the bleeding
But nothing made as much sense as «Seeing is believing»
I can’t stop crying
This isn’t human
Only illusion, but I’m trying
What I saw will defy
Too many dead to identify
Cities disappear and whole families die
So when you deny, spreading lies my mind burns with the pictures left behind
Please look inside my eye and tell six million Earth citizens why
All I want to know is how the hell can you deny?
How the hell can you deny?
How the hell can you deny?
How the hell can you deny…