Analysis of Poems Relating to The Holocaust

Analysis of Poems Relating to The Holocaust

Death Fugue by Paul Celan

In the year 1920, Paul Celan was born at Czernowitz Romania, and his parents spoke the German language. Paul went to study medicine in Paris, but he returned later to Romania before the outbreak of the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, Nazi Germany forced his parents to go and work at the Nazi concentration camp. Paul, on the other hand, worked for 18 months in a forced labour camp. Because of being unable to work, The Germans shot Paul’s mother to death and his father died of typhus. Paul, after escaping the camp, he settled in Bucharest and later in Vienna before returning to Paris.

In the poem, we can notice the Nazi forcing the Jews to dig graves of their own, the efficiency of the Nazi killing machine, burning of dead bodies in order to save effort and space. The speakers have an ironic detachment, but we can realize the attitude is a result of having been worn down by the “black milk.” The guards kill and beat them at will as if they were cattle. Compared with life in the camp, death was as a great relief to them. Much repetition represents the inescapable cycle of suffering in the poem.

In this poem, Jewish prisoners are the speakers. “Black milk” symbolizes the harsh life they live in the concentration camps. The prisoners drink the brew all day long. Paul represents the repetitive and endless suffering the prisoners went through by repetitively using the phrase “we drink”. Paul refers to the guard using the word “man” which implies understatement and his vipers symbolize black magic, lack of innocence, sin, and betrayal. The use of the words “grave in the air” show that the Germanys did not decently bury the Jews, but, instead, their bodies burned into ashes.

The intricate work of excellent, evocative illustration of agony, rhythmic language, and the imagery makes this poem interesting to read. The poem uses “fugue” by repeating several phrases. The fugue is like a dance; in the poem, there is a dance with death. Repetition creates a musical code of macabre and keeps the poem flowing. Wiesel makes every stanza in the poem to sounds more disorienting and faster. Comparison between Shulamite and Marguerite symbolizes ideal Jewish feminine. The Nazi crematoriums and references to death represent menace. The speaker asserts that “Death is master from Germany.”

Never shall I forget by Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was born in 1928 at Sighet in Romania. Before World War II, Elie studied Jewish religion. In the Holocaust, the Germanys forced Wiesel and his family into Auschwitz were at least 6 million Jews died. Later, the Nazi also sent Wiesel and his father to Auschwitz sub-camp, Buna Werke labour camp, where the Nazi forced them to work in inhuman and deplorable conditions. They were forced to other Nazi camps and finally to Buchenwald camp where a German soldier punished his father to death. Three months later, the camp became liberated. Wiesel’s younger sister Tzipora and his mother also died during the Holocaust. Only he and his older sisters Hilda and Beatrice survived of the many relatives he had.

The poem is dark and talks about the experience Wiesel went through in the death camps of the Germans. He expresses that it will be difficult to forget how corpses smelled while they were burning in the air. The author describes how he lost his desire for life and his faith in God because of these injustices.

Elie Wiesel relates the burning body with smoke. The Germans ordered burning people who died in the camp in order to save labour and effort. He describes the Germany Nazis as inhuman because they also killed innocent children, “Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.”

The author successfully uses figures of speech such as repetition, symbolism, flashback, and hyperbole to connect the readers to the experiences in the death camps. The whole poem is based on flashback as he explains how he suffered in the Holocaust and how he observed others being humiliated. Repetition has been used actively in this poem. Wiesel repeats the phrase “Never shall I forget” many times. He uses the word “night” to show how every day in the camp was sorrowful, dark and sad. The author describes how people were killed and burnt.