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EmailPoetry in Response to the Holocaust
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Rivka Pollack
Israel
“Never Forget.” ”Remember.” Jews and many others around the world repeat these phrases on Holocaust Memorial Days and during Holocaust week. The question, however, arises of how to remember.Immediately after the Holocaust and the end of World War II, many survivors wanted to “forget and move on.” However, a person is still left with an enormous burden which needs to be dealt with. Moreover, the trauma, as research has shown, is not only among the survivors themselves. Second Generation survivors, the children of those who endured the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe, have also received torment through their parents’ sufferings. In addition, liberating soldiers witnessed the aftermath and last stages of the Holocaust. There are also those who, while seemingly unconnected, have learnt about it and feel the pain over what was almost the genocide of the Jewish people.
After the Holocaust, many felt that it was wrong to write anything, and especially poetry, on the Holocaust. T.W. Adorno, a leading German-Jewish critic in 1949 was one of the first to assert the problem with writing poetry after the Holocaust, in general, writing: “Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch,” “after Auschwitz it is barbaric to write poetry” (Schiff xviii). While Adorno is talking about poetry in general, certainly poetry concerning the Holocaust itself would be intolerable. Auschwitz had become a symbol of the Holocaust, as Michael Hamburger points out, and many took this statement to heart, as people stopped writing about the Holocaust (Schiff xviii). Furthermore, Adorno warns that the reconstruction of the Holocaust would taint the writers, alluding to the discord between the beauty and orderly conventions of poetry and the hideousness and chaos of the Holocaust (Ezrahi 6). Elie Wiesel has stated similarly, that “the moment it is told, the experience turns to betrayal” (Steele 22).
Due to the extreme nature of the Holocaust, it is hard to conceive a way to depict the events of the War, making it easy to accept Adorno’s statement. As Lawrence Langer questions, after seeing a photograph from the Holocaust: “Do we violate the sanctity of that moment by trying to endow it with verbal life? Do we violate it if we refuse to do so?” (Steele 77). Gerald Stern says that:
not only is poetry possible after the Holocaust, but it is absolutely necessary. […] Poetry is really the only response to the Holocaust […] it is only through metaphor, through strangeness, maybe even through rhythm, repetition, canting, moaning, singing, whispering, that we can begin to understand—if we can ever begin to understand.
He also states that it is not “barbaric,” as Adorno says, to write poetry about the Holocaust, it is only barbaric to write “bad” poetry. The problem with bad poetry about the Holocaust is that it is embarrassing and betraying, living so close to the actual event. The language of poetry needed to change, in order to correspond to everything and to attempt to convey what had occurred. William Butler Yeats suggested a new analysis of language and its’ function, questioning what a poem and beauty is (Schiff xix), or, as Alvin Rosenfeld put it, there must be a “new order of consciousness” (Steele 23).
Poetry is an art form which has become synonymous with beauty. This is seen through the second definition of “poem” in the Webster’s dictionary. There, a poem is defined as a “composition which, though not in verse, is characterized by great beauty of language or expression.” It is this definition that validates Adorno’s statement. However, “poem” is initially defined as “a composition in verse, especially one that is characterized by a highly developed artistic form and by the use of heightened language and rhythm to express an intensely imaginative interpretation of the subject.” The “new order of consciousness” must arise from the imagination of the poets, as it is a genre of poetry that is not widely used. In order to transmit what the poet wants to the readers, it is imperative that the poet uses his/her imagination in order to get the horrifying images across in a powerful way. Poetry can be the transference of an experience, image, or feeling. This is recognized in the 1962 preface to An den Wind geschrieben: Lyrik der Freiheit, 1933-1945 (Written to the wind: Poetry of freedom, 1933-1945), an anthology of exile and oppositional poetry, containing some poems from the camps. Here, the editor and compiler, Manfred Schlösser (1962:9) writes that “not every poem here may appeal to our understanding of art.” He then asserts that putting the poetry in the anthology is “justified because of the human significance of this poetry” (Nader 154).
Irena Klepfisz asks, if “we want […] to make bearable what is unbearable?” Likewise, Hannah Ardent says how a poet is “someone who must say the unsayable, who must not remain silent on occasions when all are silent” (Obiechina 533). Various poets dealt with writing poetry after the Holocaust in different ways and it was important for many to persist. Marge Piercy, for example, says that Adorno’s statement can be applied to anything after the Holocaust: eating, going to the opera, making love and other such things that ensure our survival. However, the Survivors and the world must endure, even though the “view of the world now includes a machine for systematically killing because of a religion.” Piercy continues by observing that this also includes lynch mobs and other oppressions that occur in the world. Therefore, many write poetry based on their own limited lifetime experiences.
Marge Piercy claims that Adorno made his statement as he sees poetry as a “rarefied human activity.” Adorno’s familiarity with “obtuse and intellectual” poets, which he “refers to most often,” validates this perspective (Piercy). Poetry however, is “a very old habit of the human species, like […] telling each other stories to make sense out of the patterns of life” (Piercy). Tragedy, especially, has been written about in poetry since the times of the Bible; great poets and thinkers such as Homer, Aristotle, Dante and Shakespeare have all written about it. Much of what is written about human suffering in literature comes from Aristotle’s Poetics: he did not believe in the destruction of good men. Walter Kaufmann notes, in his Tragedy and Philosophy, that Aristotle “considered totally undeserved suffering shocking rather than tragic” (Steele 58). This view, that good men should not suffer, is widely held, even until today (Steele 58). Homer, however, saw “the unpredictable, irrational, capricious element precisely in deeds and decisions that mean cruel suffering and hideous death for large masses of people” (Steele 59). While the “Homeric slaughters” are not to the devastating scale of the Holocaust, it does challenge the Aristotelian view that everything can be rationally understood and categorized, showing that great works can portray baseless, mass, killings (Steele 59). Steele lists Medea, Antigone, and King Lear as being the few classic tragedies that defy Aristotelian criteria. He then points out Langer’s observation that “Shakespeare’s mind was perhaps one of the few prior to the Holocaust that might have understood the event itself” (59). The scriptures of Jeremiah, in Jeremiah and Lamentations, are sources of poetic tragedy that precede Aristotle by about 250 years. Lamentations has captured the sufferings of the Jewish people throughout the centuries, many parts of Lamentations sounding like they could even be Holocaust poetry.
See, O L-rd, my misery;
How the enemy jeers!
[………………………]
All her inhabitants sigh
As they search for bread;
They have bartered their treasures for food,
To keep themselves alive.—
See O L-rd, and behold
How abject I have become!
(1:9-11)
This could be a poem about the starvation of the Jewish people during the Holocaust, having to trade anything of value for food. There are also passages that describe this further, showing how people started to look out only for themselves, in order to keep themselves alive:
I cried out to my friends,
But they played me false.
My priests and my elders
Have perished in the city
As they searched for food
To keep themselves alive.
(1:19)
But perhaps the greatest lines that completely express the loss of words after destructions as big as the Temple and again during the Holocaust, are the lines: “What can I match with you to console you, […] / For your ruin is vast as the sea” (2:13).
The solemn Jewish writings did not stop there but continued into writings called kinot, meaning to lament. Although Jeremiah and Lamentations were written to mourn the devastation of the land and the destruction of the First Temple, the people felt that they needed something more to help them grieve over this tragic event; thus people started to write kinot. Kinot were later composed after the destruction of the Second Temple adding kinot throughout the Crusades, the expulsion of the Jews from England, the Spanish Inquisition, the Chmielnicki massacres, and various pogroms in Eastern Europe. These writings seem to be the most widely used forms of expressing mass suffering, with the most historical context.
Many of the kinot also have similar descriptions of what occurred in the Holocaust. The first kina starts with the words, “Zechor,” “Remember” and is based on the fifth chapter of Lamentations. The form is rhyming couplets, where the first line corresponds to the parallel verse in Lamentations, followed by the word, “Oy!,” “O woe!” The second stich is either the poet’s extensions of the verse’s lament, or his explanation of why the tragedy, mentioned in the first part of the couplet, occurred. At the end of each stanza, the phrase “O woe! What has befallen us!” is inserted (48). In kina fourteen, “Alas—that it has already been done,” the end describes the terrors of what happened to the Jews in the hands of their captors, and the people questioning why it happened, quite parallel to what happened after the Holocaust:
The captors slept [peacefully], having stabbed Their [Jewish captives’] bodies, Treating them as if they were cattle. [……………………………………] Summon forth, O Powerful One, the [day of] slaughter and the cup [of agony] for those who repudiate You, those who shattered the ruined wall while all nations and tongues [stood by and] watched; for [only] the precious sons of Zion lamented over these [Jewish tragedies]. The precious [Patriarchs] let a voice of weeping be heard on high, [crying] ‘Why is this? And why did it happen so?’ In unison, one said, ‘This is the reason.’ and the other said, ‘That is the reason.’ but all lamented that they had been made to transform the expression, ‘How?’ into the expression, ‘Where is [the Divine promise], “So [says Hashem]”?’ (209)
The twenty-eighth kina is entitled “How can you console me?” Because of the great tragedies that occurred, Rabbi Elazar HaKalir expresses the futility of our attempt to try and find consolation for the tragedies. The yoke of having witnessed the tragedy of the destruction of the Temple and the wretched state of the land of Israel is beyond endurance. The kina ends, however, with the assertion that although there can be no consolation when the nation is in exile, there is always hope for the redemption and ultimate consolation (286):
My spirit is exhausted by the killers,
By the number of the murder victims
Who call longingly like a deer,
And are slaughtered for Your sake.
So how can I be consoled?
[………………………………………………….]
Calamities upon calamities, each more tragic than the other,
overwhelming and powerful, enduring and not short lived.
So how can I be consoled?
(289)
This is like Martin Herskovitz’s poem “Ineffable,” where the poet is trying to fight against the silence in which he was brought up, as a Second Generation survivor:
In Auschwitz silence will not suffice.
For when words return,
they return as they were,
Like seeds scattered on the frozen ground.
But if I find the language of destruction,
To parse therewith a syntax of the pain.
Then words entombed shall resurgent flow
Words whose tears may heal the soul again
(Herskovitz 17)
The poet here is describing the difficulties of finding the language to talk about the Holocaust and searching for the right words that will heal his soul. Both Rabbi Elazar HaKalir and Herskovitz question how it is possible to be consoled after the traumas that affected their individual lives.
Anne Sexton also talks along similar lines, in her poem, “After Auschwitz.” Man with his small pink toes, with his miraculous fingers is not a temple but an outhouse, I say aloud. Let man never again raise his teacup. Let man never again write a book. Let man never again put on his shoe. Let man never again raise his eyes, on a soft July night. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. I say those things aloud. I beg the Lord not to hear.
Rita Horváth duly notes on these lines that the silence in the poem seems to be respectful to the victims “and therefore morally acceptable” (157). She goes on saying that:
the speaker’s last indirect statement about what she says to God, rather than her actually saying it, continues the line of reported statements which indicate that her speech is actually silence. However, this silence, achieved through poetry amounts to a tortured scream. (160)
Sexton’s poem parallels Rabbi Elazar HaKalir’s kina, when he cries out: “My groans are many and my laments are powerful; / my moanings are abundant,” and then his questioning at the end of each stanza, “so how can I be consoled?” These are his silent “tortured screams” that Sexton is describing.
Sexton’s poem can be compared to another kina. The opening stanza of “After Auschwitz” describes the inhumane treatment of children during the Shoah. Sexton’s poem begins with the following intense language and imagery:
Anger, as black as a hook, overtakes me. Each day, each Nazi took, at 8:00 A.M., a baby and sauteed him for breakfast in his frying pan.
Kina twenty-two is one of unknown authorship that is depicting the distress of a survivor of an unknown massacred community (254):
My infants and my babes were treated like sheep for the slaughter. About this shall I wail, my tears on [my] cheek. Gather around me, O suffering lost sheep, to intensify [your] weeping and to scream even louder. (255)
Both works are dealing with the murder of small babies and children, in an uncaring, methodical fashion.There have been two kinot that have been added since the Holocaust. The first was added in 1959 and the second in 1984, both by Rabbis who had been through the Holocaust. The “Kinnah in memory of the Martyrs of Churban Europe” by Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam, shlita, Bobover Rav, wrote “Zichru Na,” “Remember, please.” Rabbi Halberstam lost everything from family and friends to thousands of disciples in the Shoah (384). The Rav explains why he wrote this kina:
For years I had wanted to express my grief over my personal loss and Klal Yisrael’s loss, in a special kinnah, but I hesitated. I felt that in order to compose a kinnah one must be on the exalted level of R’ Elazar HaKalir, who wrote with Ruach HaKodesh, Divine inspiration. […] Chassidim requested a vehicle to convey their personal sorrow on this bitter day, but I held back, because I felt genuinely unworthy.
‘Then, one day, I was studying the laws of Tisha B’Av in the book Seder HaYom [by R’ Moshe ben Yehudah Makir, Rosh Yeshivah in Safed, and a colleague of the Arizal and R’ Yosef Karo]. He writes as follows:
Whoever can wail on this day should wail, and whoever can recite kinnos should recite kinnos—either those already recorded in the holy books, or the kinnos he himself composed with the intellect God has granted him. It is a mitzvah for each and every individual to compose kinnos for weeping and moaning and to recite them on this bitter day. One who does this is considered most righteous and is worthy of being described as one of Jerusalem’s mourners and one of her holy men. But one who is not capable of composing his personal kinnos, should recite the kinnos written by others.
‘When I read these words,’ the Rav concluded, ‘I saw a clear sign from heaven that the time had come to compose a kinnah over the last churban. For doesn’t the Seder HaYom say clearly that any person, even the smallest, should express his own feelings in his original kinnah?’
(285-286)
These writings, though most of them centuries old, seem to be the basis for Holocaust poetry, enabling the poets to write in the harsh descriptive ways that they do, having been done, to one extent or another, before. In addition, the writing by R’ Moshe ben Yehudah Makir, that the Bobover Rav quotes, clearly states the need for kinot, and to take it one step further, poetry in general, on the Holocaust. Although he speaks specifically of kinot and reciting them on Tisha B’Av, poetry must be written for people to express their pain and mourning.
Holocaust poetry is a lot of times written in English, even by survivors, as it is seen as the language that was furthest away from the camps. English was the language of the liberators, and symbolized a new world order, with different human values than those that were dominant in Europe during the rise and rule of the Nazi party (Ezrahi 12). As Jacob Lind asserts: “English, after May 1940, was simply the sound of defiance, the language of reason” (Ezrahi 12). While this was true, it was still hard for Survivors to write in the language that could not fully describe the horrors, and further more, the “language of reason” could not erase the images and memories of the War. It was for this reason that people stopped writing and a long period of silence followed the Holocaust. “Holocaust” is a word of Greek origin, meaning a burnt offering. It was not like any other terms that had specific historical significance attached to them, such as Great War or Armageddon (Roskies 261); but this was precisely what was needed, for people did not want what had just happened in Europe to be compared or connected to any other historical event. Poets who write Holocaust poetry, especially native English speakers, are able to write in the language that is furthest removed from the event by drawing on techniques and styles previously used in Yiddish, German, Hebrew, and Russian poems (Gubar 193).
People write Holocaust poetry for different reasons. Most First Generation Survivors write in order to speak out, through guilt of survival and in order to bear witness of the things that they themselves experienced. André Nader talks about how many Survivors did not write or talk about their experiences immediately after the War, though they had felt more of a need to tell what they had been through, by the 1980s. They began realizing they were getting older and became that the stories of the horrors of the Holocaust, as well as their survival, would remain lost with their deaths. They felt the need to remember and to bear witness to what had happened to them and those around them to the younger generations. After approximately a thirty five year silence, the First Generation Survivors of the Holocaust recognized that they could not forget and go on with their lives without the Holocaust, as this was a part of who they were and formed who they had became. Although Wiesel has written that telling of an experience is to betray it, he has also written how “not to transmit an experience is to betray it” (Steele 22). In Wiesel’s “Why I Write” he states, on a more personal note, that he writes “in order not to go mad […] to wrench those victims from oblivion. To help the dead vanquish death” (Steele 22).
Karen Gershon is a different example of a First Generation Survivor. Born Kaeth Lowenthal, Gershon was sent from Germany with her older sister to England on a Kindertransport. Feeling guilty that she survived, while her parents and the rest of her family did not, she felt that it was her duty to bear witness to the tragedies of the Holocaust. In her book We Came as Children, she writes: “I will not fight against it [her terrible past] but put it to work. I cannot alter what has happened but by making a tool of it I can at least give it a purpose” (Lawson 416). She uses her poetry in order to mourn her parents’ murder, as this is all she has left of them. Gershon’s poetry comprises of various aspects of Hebrew tradition, including references to the Bible, as well as the lamentation poetry. In addition, she made up her own style of poetry, describing it in her Collected Poems as “an eight-line stanza with movable rhymes or half-rhymes” (Lawson 417). This can be seen in her poem, “The Children’s Exodus,” where both the historical, Jewish aspect, as well as her own personal style, comes into play:
When we went out of Germany carrying six million lives that was Jewish history but each child was one refugee we unlike the Egyptian slaves were exiled individually and each in desolation has created his own wilderness (Stanza 3)
The aspect of remembering and understanding history is seen in her poem “To My Children,” warning her children to understand their history (Lawson 417). Gershon’s guilt comes out in her poem entitled, “I Was Not There.” This poem describes her guilt of not being there when her parents were taken off to their death, as stated in the first two lines of the poem: “The morning they set out from home / I was not there to comfort them.” She speaks of her unfamiliarity with her family’s and parents’ history, as she was only fifteen when she was sent off to England:
One told me that my father spent a day in prison long ago [……………………………] what difference does it make now [……………………………] I was not there to comfort him and now I have no means to know of what I was kept ignorant (stanza 2)Again in the last two stanzas she writes about her guilt, feeling that if she were there, she may have somehow, saved her parents from their slaughter: “Both my parents died in camps […] / I was not there they were alone […] / I must atone because I live.” The final lines of the poem then continue with her grievance and guilt:
they might have lived to succour me and none shall say in my defence had I been there to comfort them it would have made not difference
Second Generation survivors have the burden of not only bearing witness for their parents, but also of mourning for their parents. They also find the need to deal with not knowing their extended family. Many psychological problems have come about as a result of their parents not being able to give the same kind of emotional attention as their peers may have gotten, due to the Survivor dealing with past trauma. There are two paradoxes in the childhood of Survivors. The first is the growing up with little knowledge of the Holocaust while being brought up as “Memorial Candles” for those that were never spoken of. The second is that while the Survivor parent “valued and cherished” their children, as their victory over Hitler, the parents were often emotionally distant, making the children grow up feeling abandoned and with low self-esteem (Herskovitz 3). The children of the Survivors feel that they are a “direct link to the obliterated past” feeling that they must witness an event and a culture that they never really knew (Berger 99). In order to deal with these feelings of confusion, many turned to poetry “which relies on sounds and images and not so much on well-ordered thought processes,” in order to sort out their chaotic lives (Herskovitz 3).
The poetry of the Holocaust is not only about the camps and Europe, but also how it affected people. Second Generation survivors were greatly influenced by the seeming inattentiveness of their parents. This deficiency is not limited to their childhood; as adults, they mirror their parents by giving over love to their children, the way it had been received.
You say I don’t love you I love you no different than my parents Loved me. Isn’t that love? Neither of us knows. Love has no formula That can be held to the light. I have what I felt When my parents cared for me, As they could. (Herskovitz “A Love Poem” lines 1-10)
Second Generation survivors also felt a great lack of knowledge about their extended family, as Elizabeth Rossner writes in her poem, “Birthright”: “there are no portraits of ancestors hanging on my walls” (line 1). This lacking leads some poets to try to personalize the names of their relatives to know them. Herskovitz relates to this as the “poetic imagination…[creating] an image of those who died out of what is given often only a name” (10). He does this in a number of poems. In “Names,” Herskovitz is trying to imagine what grandfather was called by various people of the family:
My mother’s father was named Mordechai But maybe, because he was the eldest son, His mother called him Tateleh, And his father probably called him Mordkhe Like my father calls me. [………………………………………………] Except for the baby sister who called him Momo Even after she grew up. [……………………………………………..] And his children surely called him Tati As did his wife, Except late at night, alone in the bedroom She would maybe call to him with Yiddish familiars In a soft erotic lilt. Or maybe not, Because Mordechai Kleinbart is the single name I have [………………………………………….] All the other names are exist only in memories long interred Or on pages yet unwritten.
Herskovitz is a classic example of a “Memorial Candle.” Named after his grandfather who was murdered in the Shoah, Herskovitz is now trying to get to know him through this poem. In his poem, “Mints,” Herskovitz continues piecing together his family. He writes about his great-grandfather, and predicts how his uncles would have reacted after receiving the mints from their grandfather: “It is left for me to imagine my uncles crunching impatiently / The hard candy when they tired of letting it dissolve / As I would, a generation on” (lines 8-10). He then continues imagining his uncles “[…] racing home / along cobbled streets / Candies clutched tightly in their fists” (lines 18-20).
Contrary to Herskovitz’s approach of concerning himself with the ones he had lost, Carol Lipsyzc has a more positive outlook. In her poem, “Passover, 1962,” Lipsyzc is writing about how hard it is for her parents, not having the rest of their family around, as most families do at their Passover Seders. Lipsyzc, conversely, felt, almost shamefully, grateful that she had her immediate family around her, and did not have to go through the horrors that her parents went through:
And I remember being secretly relieved that I wasn’t my parents I HAD a mother, a father, a brother, a sister (lines 89-94)
Something that Second Generation survivors have in common is that they feel the importance of passing on what happened in the Holocaust. Ruth Mandel, in her book How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust, pieces together her family’s history in a collection of poetry. As the child and grandchild of Holocaust Survivors, she conveys the difficulties in dealing with the Holocaust (McCann). While going against the unspoken rules of not talking about the Holocaust with her family, she directly asked her father “what happened to you in the Holocaust?” McCann, in her review, describes the final section of the book as:
a meditation of the Holocaust and its aftermath, both for the author and her children. This portion of the work also highlights Mandel’s role as a spokeswoman, a role that she clearly does not welcome, but realizes is necessary writing in the poem Incantation:
If I do not interpret this history
Then who will
In the poem “Tell Your Children,” Mandel ends by warning that despite the struggle, the Holocaust must be told about: “Tell your children / Whenever. However / For whatever reason” (McMann).
The children of Survivors feel a need to bear witness, as they feel that they are a connection between the world and the Holocaust. It is therefore important for the children to “repair something that was destroyed by the Holocaust,” which is what Herskovitz feels that he does with his poetry. He has also written that he is expressing his feelings and “even creating a legacy from within the silence” with his poetry (e-mail interview). The poetry also helps various poets deal with the confusion that has built up inside of them, throughout their childhood, and some of them use poetry in a therapeutic way. Carol Lipsyzc, for instance, writes that poetry helps her “clarify [her] thoughts and discover […] some […] insights” (e-mail interview). Where “cathartic” or “healing” are not words she would use to describe the effects of poetry on her, it nonetheless does “help one understand even if one never understands.” She expands on this thought by saying: “I rediscover the humanity, the resilience and creativity in the characters that emerge and ask myself ethical questions as I write about the Holocaust” (e-mail interview).
The paradox of the constant absence of the Holocaust, yet the simultaneous continuous presence, was hard to deal with, while growing up. Herskovitz depicts this in his poem, “Eclipse”:
How did I know about the Holocaust
Amidst the silence.
Or was the knowing encrypted on my soul
Trickling, in time, to my consciousness.
(5 lines 1-4)
The merging between the parents’ condition and those of their children, made it sometimes hard to differentiate between the two experiences. Lily Brett describes part of her long process of healing and being able to separate her mother’s experiences from her own:
It has taken me
a long time to know
that it was your war
not mine
that I wasn’t
in Auschwitz
myself
[………..]
I have had
trouble
Mother
leaving you.
(“Leaving You” lines 1-7; 38-41)
Many try to fill the void of any family memories with historical detailed information about the family (Herskovitz 8), as Herskovitz and Brett do in their poetry. Brett describes this process of trying to remember facts and dates, and while gifted with a “good memory,” (line 51) she cannot seem to keep straight all of the data in her poem “I Keep Forgetting.”
I keep forgetting
the facts and statistics
and each time
I need to know them
I look up books
(lines 1-5)
Between the paradoxes during their childhood, and the blurred lines between them and their parents’ experiences, confusion is a common theme of Second Generation Holocaust poetry.
Jews, regardless or not of being descendents of Survivors, are a major source of Holocaust poetry, feeling connected to the Holocaust as this was a massive offence against Jews as an entity. Those that write the poetry are mainly those that want to speak out and to remember the tragedies of the Shoah. Some do this after they visit the Camps while some write in order to try and understand what happened during the Shoah.
Adrienne Rich is an American poet of Jewish descent. Much of her poetry reflects on guilt and innocence, taking her feelings of guilt into a mission of “social responsibility” (Hollenberg 993). Rich keeps in line with the long lasting tradition of poetry, in protecting memories and the spiritual community (Hollenberg 995). In her poem, “Yugoslavia, 1944,” Rich honours Hannah Senesh, a Hungarian girl who moved to Israel and trained as a parachutist to fight in the War. Rich describes her determination to continue: “if I can I mean to stay alive” (line 12).
Susan Dambroff of San Francisco remembers and speaks out for the unspoken heroes and resisters in the Holocaust, in her “There Were Those”:
There were those
who escaped to the forests
who crawled through sewers
who jumped from the backs of trains
[………………………….]
There were those
who were shoemakers
who put nails
into the boots
of German Soldiers
There were those
who wrote poetry
who put on plays
who taught the children
There were those
that fed each other.
Another American poet, Emily Borenstein, who was born in New Jersey in 1923, writes about the important responsibility of remembering and bearing witness to the Holocaust:
I press my face to the pane of death to witness
the slaughter of Jews in Warsaw.
I must tell the story of this tragic event.
I write for my friend Pesha.
I write for my cousin Perelke who was going to be
an actress
[………………………………….]
Names pile up like pebbles on tombstones.
To forget you is to let you die twice.
(“I Must Tell the Story” lines 1-6;15-16)
There are other people that, although not professional poets, feel the need to write poetry after visiting the Camps in Europe. Some write down poetry in order to help themselves, as well as others, try to understand what really happened, and trying to put it into perspective for themselves. This is what one Canadian March of the Living participant did after visiting Poland in April 2002. The poet sees through the camps the beauty and hate of people, and tries to deal with these new sensations:
In you
I see beauty
I see faith
I see love
I see horror
I see desperation
I see hate
I feel humanity
(Anonymous lines 11-18)
However, as much as they want to understand, it is realized that “imagination is not enough” (Silberschmidt line 7). J. Silberschmidt, of the 2001 March of the Living, continues in his poem “Poland” the acknowledgement that he “will never experience enough” although he has “already experienced too much” (Silberschmidt lines 9-10).
The art of poetry helps one survive and deal with the shaping and the ordering of various “facts” that one confronts, thus aiding in survival and recovery, offering a different perspective of how to look at a situation (Nader 160). David Graham uses his poetry in order to help himself deal with his emotions and the understanding of what had happened in “Treblinka.” He ends his poem with the following three stanzas:
It would have been better had there never been a birth.
For those innocent eyes will never see life’s worth.
Fate has chosen these little ones to die.
Many today still ask, “Why?”
We think it’s all over— “…it is done, it is past”
We want to believe the children screamed their last.
But listen close, and you will hear the sound,
Of Treblinka’s faint heartbeat, below the yellow ground.
In our weakness we call the madmen Them and They.
Are our souls so different & brave—that we’d have stood in the way?
So exalt not my friend, in a self-glorified stand….
For Treblinka sprang forth from the heart and mind of Man.
Graham questions how little children and innocent people could be killed but by the end of the poem he comes to a realization that what took place is much worse than imagined. It is important that people take heed and remember what once occurred in Europe, for it was “from the heart and mind of Man” that the Holocaust arose, not from mindless creatures. As shocking as the death of innocent people and children is to the poet, what shocks him more is that there were people that were capable of knowingly committing such atrocities.
Irving Feldman, another Jewish American poet tries to put himself in the situation of being in Europe during the Holocaust. As a result of him not being there, he has the freedom of historical imagination and needs not mention real people that were there. Instead, in his poem “The Pripet Marshes” he shifts his family and friends from America into north-western Ukraine, right before the Germans are to arrive (Ezrahi 210):
Often I think of my Jewish friends and seize them as they are
and transport them in my mind to the shtetlach and ghettos,
[……………………………………………………………….]
And all of them
I set among the mists of the Pripet Marshes, which I have
never seen, among wooden buildings that loom up suddenly
one at a time, because I have only heard of them in stories,
and that long ago.
It is the moment before the Germans will arrive.
(50-51)
Feldman takes upon himself the burden of surviving the Shoah, thus he is only able to relate to the dead and the devastation that was around afterwards. In “The Pripet Marshes,” he tries to save the Jews around him, feeling an obligation, having been spared. In addition, he must “relive the death of the millions, over and over” (Ezrahi 211). Feldman ends the poem with the struggle to save the Jews from the Germans, until he can no longer do so:
In the moment when the Germans are beginning to enter the
town.
But there isn’t a second to lose, I snatch them all back,
For, when I want to, I can be a God.
No, the Germans won’t have one of them!
This is my people, they are mine!
And I flee with them, crowd out with them: I hide myself in a
Pillowcase stuffed with clothing, in a woman’s knotted handkerchief, in a shoebox.
And one by one I cover them in mist, I take them.
The German motorcycles zoom through the town,
They break their firsts on the hollow doors.
But I can’t hold out any longer. My mind clouds over.
I sink down as though drugged or beaten.
(52-53)
Whereas Feldman puts himself in the place of the Jews of the Holocaust in order to take on some of the burden, there are those that write in metaphor and personification, often misusing, according to many, the terms and ideas of the Holocaust for their own purposes. Sylvia Plath is one example of this. She takes her own traumatized life and makes it analogous to the traumas of the Jews in the Holocaust:
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
(“Daddy” stanza 7)
Like a number of poets of her generation, Plath viewed the Shoah as a way for the imagination to express what it means for the unfathomable to occur (Gubar 194). Plath takes the voice of the victims, in quite a few of her poems, by writing about her grief and hurt over the loss of her father, as if she were a Jew on her way to the camps. Doing this does not help her understand the tragedy of what the Jews felt in the Holocaust, rather it diminishes real tragedy of those who went through the Holocaust, by making her more common problems seem as if on the same level of this calamity. Many people find poetry like this offensive, as the poet has nothing to do with the Holocaust, yet compares her life to it.
While Sylvia Plath writes offensively, using the Holocaust as imagery for everyday usage, most non-Jews are in two main categories. There are those that are connected in some way to the Holocaust and the horrors of World War II while there are others that are not connected to the Holocaust. The ones connected to the Holocaust, try to assume part of the burden of the terrors that went on within Europe during the War. Those that are unconnected have different reasons. Some are doing it to speak out and to remember the Holocaust, and some searching for themselves and for G-d.
Randall Jarrell was born a Gentile in Nashville, Tennessee and was in the army during the War (“Randall Jarrell”). Jarrell is one of the rare American poets who took the images of the camps and the suffering in order to assume “the burden of the witness who inherits the dying victim’s portion of pain” (Ezrahi 182). One of the more image invoking lines, that Ezrahi points out, is in “A Camp in the Prussian Forest.” Here, with grammatical transformation to outside the normal rules of discourse, the victims are “reduced from agents to objects of normal human functions.” This continues through the end of the stanza, breaching the normal lines of communication through the literal and metaphorical language by not differentiating between the two:
Here men were drunk like water, burnt like wood.
The fate of good
And evil, the breast’s star of hope
Were rendered into soap.
There is, throughout the poem, a rhyme scheme that always brings the speaker back on track, into familiarity, from his “violated syntax” (Ezrahi 184). Jarrell does something similar in his poem, “In the Camp There Was One Alive,” which comes with the subtitled note: “This is a concentration camp burned by its guards, deserted by its prisoners, and not yet occupied by the Allies.” Here, there are four lined stanzas, like the previous poem, but instead of the aabb ccdd etc. rhyme structure, as there was in the last, there is an abcb defe etc. one. This helps keep the structure of the poem, from the harshness of the topic, but also from the constant use of enjambments during and between the stanzas. This gives an eerie, effect to the poem. It brings the reader to the end of a stanza that could go a few ways. The reader continues on to the next stanza, still within the same sentence, making the effect on the reader much more horrible. This is exemplified in the second sentence of the poem that goes from the middle of the first until the beginning of the third stanza:
The child, in his charred cave,
Watches the shaking fire
Struggle to him in torment
Till, stumbling, the shades sink back
Into his helplessness; his shaking
Limbs shrink to nothing, crack
Under the beams that pin him.
Jarrell is able to offer a unique perspective of the Holocaust, through his poetry, as he saw the Jews while he was in a “normal state.” Though technically still alive, the Jews from the Camps, mere shadows of the healthy people they once were, could barely separate their fate from the same carnage that befell their friends and family. Jarrell, on the other hand, came from the outside looking in, yet still seeing everything first hand. He was only able to compare what he saw to what he already knew, making everything conceptually out of reach, as nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. Jarrell’s sudden encounter with the horrors that went on in the Holocaust was much different from the slow, integration that the Jews in Europe had gone through. Jarrell can be seen as a bridge between those that were in the Holocaust and those that were not, so that those that were not there could understand.
The Gentiles who did not witness the Holocaust and whose families were not touched by it relate to the Holocaust in a different way. Anne Sexton tries to understand and find G-d, in relation to herself, through her poem “After Auschwitz.” There is the tension between what her consciousness tells her is right, and the belief that people who brought forth the Holocaust “are not worthy of survival.” At the same time she wants herself and mankind to survive. In the meantime, Sexton is horrified and angry at what she has observed mankind capable of doing (Horváth 157): “Anger, / as black as a hook, / overtakes me” (lines 1-3). The conflict within the speaker between the evil in man and the ensuring of man’s survival is apparent in the third stanza:
Man is evil,
I say aloud.
Man is a flower
That should be burnt,
I say aloud.
(lines 11-15)
This inner strife of the speaker is clearly seen in the way Sexton has formed the line break between the thirteenth and fourteenth lines: “man is a flower” is the pull towards the desire of human continuance. The pull towards her knowledge of the wrong that they caused then comes back in the next line, “that should be burnt.” She goes on with this anger saying:
Let man never again raise his teacup.
Let man never again write a book.
Let man never again put on his shoe.
Let man never again raise his eyes,
on a soft July night.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
(lines 23-28)
Her compassionate side to humanity and their survival comes back in the final line of the poem, when the speaker says: “I beg the Lord not to hear.” The poem, “After Auschwitz” is included in the last volume of The Awful Rowing Toward God. This book is about her anxious search for God, showing that her inclusion of this poem is a part of her “need to confront the Holocaust [… as] an integral part of her personal quest for God, belief, and salvation” (Horváth 55).
Just as Sexton uses her poetry to understand herself and G-d, Jeremy Hobbs, uses his poetry to understand his dreams. Hobbs, a fourteen-year-old boy, had “very vivid Holocaust dreams” which resulted in a series of four Holocaust poems. Trying to understand his dreams, the poems make the world remember how the Holocaust happened: “It’s not as important to ask why the holocaust happened. It’s important to ask ‘how’ it happened” (Hobbs “My Thoughts”). He writes his poetry through the metaphor of the Roman Empire using Rome to represent Europe during the Holocaust, trying to show that one must be careful not to allow something like the Holocaust to happen again. Hobbs emphasizes the importance of knowing what happened in order to prevent another catastrophic occurrence:
Hell is not a fiery pit of suffering—
This great place called Rome,
Hell is a quiet Polish field of grass and blood,
Of pits and corpses
Tarnishing the ground with not their blood,
But with their lives,
Of what they represent.
(“If Rome Should Fall” stanza 7)
It is important for Hobbs that people forgive Europe over what happened, though it is vital not to forget what happened, in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening again: “Forgive, but never forget” (Hobbs “Of Growing Old in Rome” stanza 12).
Holocaust poetry is one of the important ways that people have been dealing with the Holocaust, each through their own experiences and personal knowledge of the event. Although there are those that argue that poetry is not the way to express pain and grief over the Holocaust, as it is too full of aesthetics, poetry is seen throughout history as the way to deal with and help heal great as well as small tragedies. The poetry that is written in English could be seen as most problematic as it is the language farthest removed from the horrors of Europe during the Shoah. This poetry, however, is taken from the older biblical texts, in terms of style, as well as formed from various other languages that were more connected to the Holocaust. Every poet has the problem of finding the right language and words of how to say the right thing in the right way; English Holocaust poets have to deal with the same issues. Although some use the images of the Holocaust in an offending way, many use it to try to heal themselves. This healing is then taken a step further, using the Holocaust by example, to ensure that such a thing will never happen again. As Czeslaw Milosz writes, “What is poetry which does not save / Nations or people?”
Works Cited
Books and Articles
Berger, Alan L. “Ashes and Hope: The Holocaust in Second Generation American Literature.” Reflections of The Holocaust in Art and Literature. Ed. Randolph L. Braham. USA: Social Science Monographs, 1990. 97-116.DeKoven Ezrahi, Sidra. By Words Alone. USA: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Gubar, Susan. “Prosopopoeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries.” The Tale Journal of Criticism 14.1 (2001): 191-215.19 October 2004. <http://muse.jhu.edu>.
Herskovitz, Martin. “Poetry and the Second Generation.” The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. 2003. 9 December 2004. <http://www1.yadvashem.org.il/search/index_search.html>.
---. E-mail interview. 20 December, 2004.
Hobbs, Jeremy. “My Thoughts.” If Rome Should Fall: Holocaust Poetry by Jeremy Hobbs in Remember.org. 29 November 2004. <http://remember.org/imagine/thoughts.html>.
Hollenberg, Donna Krolik. “Adrienne Rich.” Holocaust Literature. Ed. S. Lillian Kremer. 2 vols. London : Routledge, 2003. 993-997.
Horváth, Rita. “‘Never Asking Why Build—Only Asking which Tools’: Confessional Poetry and the Construction of the Self.” Diss., Bar Ilan University, 2002.
Kinot. In Zechor L’Avraham / The Complete Tishah B’Av Service. Nusach Ashkenaz, personal-size ed. Rabbi Nosson Scherman and Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, gen. ed. New York: Mesorah Publications Ltd., 1988.
Klepfisz, Irena, panelist. Speech and Silence: Poetry and the Holocaust. RealPlayer Internet recording. Washington, DC, 2000. 12 December 2004. <http://www.ushmm.org/museum/publicprograms/programs/poetry00/>.
Lamentations. In Tanakh, a new translation of the Holy Scriptures according to the traditional Hebrew text. U.S.A.: Jewish Publication Society, 1985.
Lawson, Peter. “Karen Gershon.” Holocaust Literature. Ed. S. Lillian Kremer. 2 vols. London : Routledge, 2003.
Lipszyc, Carol. E-mail interview. 15 November 2004.
McCann, Gillian. Rev. of How to Tell Your Children About the Holocaust, by Ruth Mandel. Women and the Holocaust. 2001. 10 March 2005. <http://www3.sympatico.ca/mighty1/reviews/review34.htm>.
Nader, André J.. “The Shock of Arrival: Poetry from the Nazi Camps at the End of the Century.” Poetics Today 21:1 (Spring 2000):151-186. 15 November, 2004. <http://muse.jhu.edu>.
Obiechina, Emmanuel. “Poetry as Therapy.” Callaloo 25.2 (2002): 527-558. 19 October 2004. <http://muse.jhu.edu>.
Piercy, Marge, panelist. Speech and Silence: Poetry and the Holocaust. RealPlayer Internet recording. Washington, DC, 2000. 12 December 2004. <http://www.ushmm.org/museum/publicprograms/programs/poetry00/>.
“Poem.” Def. 1;2. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language. 1996.
“Randall Jarrell.” The Academy of American Poets. 2005. 13 December 2004.
Roskies, David. Against the Apocalypse. USA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Schiff, Hilda, ed. Holocaust Poetry. Great Britain: Fount, 1995.
Steele, Michael R. Christianity, tragedy and Holocaust literature. USA: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Stern, Gerald, panellist. Speech and Silence: Poetry and the Holocaust. RealPlayer Internet recording. Washington, DC, 2000. 12 December 2004. <http://www.ushmm.org/museum/publicprograms/programs/poetry00/>.
Poems
Borenstein, Emily. “I Must Tell the Story.” Images from the Holocaust. Ed. Jean E. Brown, Janet E. Rubin, Elaine C. Stephens. Lincolnwood (Chicago): NTC Publishing Group, 1997. 525.
Brett, Lily. “I Keep Forgetting.” “Poetry and the Second Generation.” Martin Herskovitz. The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. 2003. 9 December 2004. <http://www1.yadvashem.org.il/search/index_search.html>.
---. “Leaving You.” Holocaust Poetry. Ed. Hilda Schiff. Great Britain: Fount, 1995. 140-141.
Czeslaw, Milosz. “Dedication.” Images from the Holocaust. Ed. Jean E. Brown, Janet E. Rubin, Elaine C. Stephens. Lincolnwood (Chicago): NTC Publishing Group, 1997. 556.
Dambroff, Susan. “There Were Those.” Images from the Holocaust. Ed. Jean E. Brown, Janet E. Rubin, Elaine C. Stephens. Lincolnwood (Chicago): NTC Publishing Group, 1997. 294.
Feldman, Iriving. “The Pripet Marshes.” New and Selected Poems. England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1979. 50-53.
Gershon, Karen. “The Children’s Exodus.” Images from the Holocaust. Ed. Jean E. Brown, Janet E. Rubin, Elaine C. Stephens. Lincolnwood (Chicago): NTC Publishing Group, 1997. 85-87.
---. “I Was Not There.” Holocaust Poetry. Ed. Hilda Schiff. Great Britain: Fount, 1995. 133-134.
Graham, David. “Treblinka.” Holocaust Poetry and Art. 1995. 28 October 2004.
Herskovitz, Martin. “Eclipse.” “Poetry and the Second Generation.” The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. 2003. 5. 9 December 2004. <http://www1.yadvashem.org.il/search/index_search.html>.
---. “Ineffable.” “Poetry and the Second Generation.” The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. 2003. 16-17. 9 December 2004. <http://www1.yadvashem.org.il/search/index_search.html>
---. “A Love Poem.” “Poetry and the Second Generation.” The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. 2003. 15. 9 December 2004. <http://www1.yadvashem.org.il/search/index_search.html>.
---. “Mints.” “Poetry and the Second Generation.” The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. 2003. 11. 9 December 2004. <http://www1.yadvashem.org.il/search/index_search.html>.
---. “Names.” “Poetry and the Second Generation.” The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. 2003. 10-11. 9 December 2004. <http://www1.yadvashem.org.il/search/index_search.html>.
Hobbs, Jeremy. “If Rome Should Fall.” If Rome Should Fall: Holocaust Poetry by Jeremy Hobbs in Remember.org. 29 November 2004. <http://remember.org/imagine/ifrome.html>.
---. “Of Growing Old in Rome.” If Rome Should Fall: Holocaust Poetry by Jeremy Hobbs in Remember.org. 29 November 2004.
Jarrell, Randall. “A Camp in the Prussian Forest.” Holocaust Poetry. Ed. Hilda Schiff. Great Britain: Fount, 1995. 97-98.
---. “In The Camp There Was One Alive.” Holocaust Poetry. Ed. Hilda Schiff. Great Britain: Fount, 1995. 72.
Lipszyc, Carol. “Passover, 1962.” E-mail to the author. 15 November 2004.
Milosz, Czeslaw. “Dedication.” Images from the Holocaust. Ed. Jean E. Brown, Janet E. Rubin, Elaine C. Stephens. Lincolnwood (Chicago): NTC Publishing Group, 1997. 556.
Plath, Sylvia. “Daddy.” Holocaust Poetry. Ed. Hilda Schiff. Great Britain: Fount, 1995. 146-148.
Rich, Adrienne. “ Yugoslavia, 1944.” Images from the Holocaust. Ed. Jean E. Brown, Janet E. Rubin, Elaine C. Stephens. Lincolnwood (Chicago): NTC Publishing Group, 1997. 474.
Rossner, Elizabeth. “Birthright.” “Poetry and the Second Generation.” Martin Herskovitz. The International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem. 2003. 5-6. 9 December 2004. <http://www1.yadvashem.org.il/search/index_search.html>.
Sexton, Anne. “After Auschwitz. American Poems. 2004. 30 November 2004.
Silberschmidt, J. “ Poland.” March of the Living. 2001. 29 November 2004. <www.motl.org/reflections.htm>.
“Sitting in cold.” 2002. 29 November 2004.
Endnotes
Kinot is the plural form of kina. Kinot are traditionally recited on the ninth of Av (the eleventh month of the Jewish calendar), a day of fasting and mourning. This is the date of the destruction of the First and Second Temples, as well as other tragedies throughout history.Hashem, literally meaning, “The Name,” referring to G-d.
Alternative spelling for kina.
Shlita is an acronym, standing for Sheyichye L'orech Yamim Tovim Aruchim. This is a blessing that the person "will live many long and good days." The word Shlita means that the Rabbi is a person of leadership.
Rabbi.
Hebrew for the nation of Israel.
A group of people who follow a particular Rav, in this case, his followers.
The ninth of Av.
The Ashkenazic pronunciation of kinot.
Destruction. When referred to as “the churban” it means Destruction of the Temple.
Nader here is bringing in information from an essay entitled “Art and Trauma” by Dori Laub and Dinel Podell (1995:993).