roman’s blog

I chose to do three different poems by two different authors all pertaining to the Holocaust. The first two are by William Heyen an American poet, editor, and literary critic. The first poem is titled, “The Hair: The Jacob korman’s story.” It’s a personal account of Jacob Korman who arrives in a Jewish town called, “Rembertow” and sees that the town has changed, that the, “cleansing of Jews” has taken place. He affirms that the Jews didn’t want to leave to their death, and they died in resisting. The poem gives a really simple, yet realistic description of what happened to the men and women there. “Men were shot trying to pull guns from the guards’ hands” and “hands of dead women clutched hair, hair of SS guards…” (lines 7-9). These words really portray the will of the Jewish people to survive and puts it plain and simple, that the holocaust was no joke, Jews would have rather taken their chances fighting an SS officer, than hop of a train headed for certain death. The second poem also by Heyen called, “Riddle” recalls the irony in which the war criminals of the holocaust defended themselves, in many accounts by saying, “I just…did this, and that…” but in truth they did kill the Jews. Many were part of the bigger picture that together helped eliminate 6 million Jews. It is this arrogant denial of murder human kind is capable of that makes this poem worth remembering. Heyen shows how even the biggest Nazi leaders denied any wrong-doing when he writes, “not I, cries the typist, not I, cries the engineer, not I, cries Adolf Eichmann, not I, cries Albert Speer.” (lines 5-8).  Heyen takes the position which Nazi’s wanted people to believe, so Heyen asks the question, “If you didn’t kill the Jews, then who did?” This poem is meaningful because of its message and the feelings It conveys are strong ones and only too easily understood once having read this poem. The third and last poem was written by Martin Niemöller a Lutheran minister who himself was a supporter of Hitler at first, but then opposed him and his acts towards the protestant church, so he was thrown into a concentration camp, where Niemoller came to his senses. The poem speaks of the Nazis taking the Jews and Niemoller himself didn’t do anything because he couldn’t relate because he wasn’t Jewish. He goes on to say, “Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist” (lines4-6). But the poem quickly shifts to a jolting stop in which Niemoller says, “Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me” (lines 10-12). The significance of this is that at the time none of the German figures of authority spoke out against the Nazi party because the Jews Hitler was killing didn’t affect them, so they felt they didn’t need to. But a time came in which Hitler himself would come after politicians and people like Niemoller and it is this ignorance of events at the very beginning that Niemoller regrets. He regrets not speaking out for other groups of people because when his group was targeted and no one was left to speak out for them. This poem teaches an important lesson that Niemoller learned the hard way, to speak out against evil in the name of the truth, to not ignore the pain of others, even if you aren’t the one suffering.