News

Lyrics of the World of Auschwitz

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has published The Auschwitz Poems: An Anthology in English. This is a large volume of 400 poems by 250 poets from around the world. Some were Auschwitz prisoners like Primo Levi, Halina Birenbaum, Charlotte Delbo, Friedrich Löwy and Tadeusz Borowskiego, and others are modern poets including the Nobel-Prize winners Elie Wiesel, Salvatore Quasimodo, Roald Hoffmann, Wisława Szymborska, and Czesław Miłosz.

The poems by former prisoners represent an exceptional documentation of a world now past of contempt and evil, and serve as evidence of crime and messages about the truth of Auschwitz. They were written to preserve the internal freedom and affirm the humanity of the poets. Adam A. Zych, the editor of the anthology, says that "camp, lager, prison poetry proved that it is possible and imperative to remain a human person and a creative being in even the most difficult conditions, rather than an object doomed to contempt and destruction."

The work by postwar poets is a significant discourse with the view of the German philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno that writing poetry after Auschwitz is an act of barbarity. Henryk Jasiczek, one of the Polish poets whose work features in the anthology, wrote that "One can look on the world / through / the magnifying glass of amazement /the diminishing glass of doubt / through the fingers through tears / black blue and rose-colored glasses / and through / ( . . . ) the thousands of empty glasses / of the Auschwitz Museum."

The current edition is the largest selection of poetry about Auschwitz. Previous years saw the publication, also under the editorship of Adam A. Zych, of the Polish-language Na mojej ziemi był Oświęcim... in two volumes (1987 and 1993), the English-language Auschwitz Poems (1999) and the German-language Auschwitz Gedichte in 1993 and the two-volume Auschwitz Gedichte in 2001.

The book can be purchased through the Museum's on-line bookstore.

Janka Abrami (1921-1993). Last Lullaby

She saw the chimneys belching smoke
and the black smoke above
covering the world with a blanket of doom
obscuring the picture of God.
She held on to her mother
the terror in her dark eyes
distorting her four-year-old face
with ancient wisdom.
"I don't want to go in there for a shower,"
she cried. "I don't want to go!"
"Shash... my pet, don't cry
the water won't be cold
and I'll hold you tight,"
the woman soothed her child
as they walked into the concrete cage.
She couldn't see the chimneys any more
nor the dark clouds above
nor did she hear the moans
and the "Shema Israel" of others
as she snuggled close to her mother.
All she heard was the loving voice
whisper the last lullaby of Auschwitz:
"Shash, my darling, Shash..."

Elie Wiesel (b. 1928). Never Shall I Forget

Never shall I forget the night,
the first night in the camp
which has turned my life into one long night,
seven times cursed and seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget this smoke.
Never shall I forget the little faces of the children
whose bodies  I saw turned into wreaths of smoke
beneath a silent blue sky. (…)

Primo Levi (1919-1987). Shemá

You who live secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter. (…)

(Translated from the Italian by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann)

Friedrich Löwy (1883-1942). Song of Buna

Mrs. Luna still stands friendly in the sky,
the camp of Buna awakes,
The Silesian sun rises high,
the work crew marches on.
And at every turn homesickness accompanies them
and the heavy song of this heavy time,
but work waves to us
and the song resounds:
Only work will set us free,
through work our sorrows will pass,
only work will let us forget
everything that we once possessed. (…)

(Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Buna, presumably 1942, unknown translator)

Tadeusz Niemira. The Perished Mother

It's me — your perished mother —
I am knocking to your yearning hearts
you cannot see me
the perished are invisible.

The time burned my eyes
the hair started first
I became a small pile of ashes
The ashes blew into the air.

It's me — your perished mother —
I call to your hearts from afar:
Let no one kill children!
Let no one burn mothers...!

I am begging — a perished mother

(Auschwitz, 1943)
Translated from the Polish by June Friedman