Today is Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January, eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz. It is Day 785 of the Daily Poems, and unusually for this site we shall post not one but two poems, taken from the anthology Poetry of the Holocaust, edited by Marian de Vooght and Jean Boase-Beier. The poems speak for themselves – even though Theodor Adorno famously wrote in 1949 “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric”– but that statement should not be taken at face value; I am confident that Poetry of the Holocaust disproves his dictum. “And if there is another life I will be a yellow star to remind you that once there was Auschwitz.”
Auschwitz is my overcoat
Ceija Stojka
translated by Marian de Vooght and Jean Boase-Beier
du hast angst vor der finsternis?
you are afraid of the darkness?
i can tell you, when there’s no one on the road,
you have nothing to fear.
i am not afraid.
my fear stayed behind in auschwitz
and in the camps.
auschwitz is my overcoat,
bergen-belsen my dress
and ravensbrück my vest.
what is there to fear?
Ceija Stojka
translated from German by Marian de Vooght and Jean Boase-Beier
The sign
Edith Bruck
translated by Peter Ualrig Kennedy
Mori d’impotenza
She died of helplessness
you can write it on my tomb
who knows where, there’s no guarantee
that one dies in the place one was born or lived
one can be anywhere
in this uncertain time
there’s no bad ground and good ground
but I would like as a marker a small star
with six points like that which shone
in childhood on my threadbare coat
carve it well into the stone
like the one they carved in me on my skin
in my flesh and in my guts
and if there is another life
I will be a yellow star
to remind you that once there was
Auschwitz.
Edith Bruck
translated from Italian by Peter Ualrig Kennedy
Poetry of the Holocaust, ed. Marian de Vooght and Jean Boase-Beier, Arc Publications, Todmorden 2019