Lists of Material Objects in Polish Holocaust Poems

• In Event: Slavic Documentary Poetry

Abstract

This paper focuses on several well-known Polish and Polish-Jewish poetic testimonies of the Holocaust that feature extensive lists of Jewish things. Enumerations of material objects appear in Zuzanna Ginczanka’s 1942 poem "Non omnis moriar," Wladyslaw Szlengel’s 1942 poem "Rzeczy" (Things), Czeslaw Milosz’s 1943 poem "Biedny chrzescijanin patrzy na getto" (A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto), Rachel Auerbach’s 1943 poetic essays "Lament rzeczy martwych" (Lament of Dead Things) and "Lacrimae rerum," as well as Tadeusz Borowski’s 1946 poem "Spacer po Monachium" (A Walk Through Munich). This paper examines the differences in the enumerations’ contents, tone, and style in relation to speakers’ positionality, and the effects of these choices, which range from journalistic to poetic. The differences open up the discussion of moral reckoning and the revision of poetry’s language during World War II and the Holocaust, especially when compared with the use of lists in a 1945 German poem by Gunter Eich, "Inventur" (Inventory).

Author

• Aleksandra Kremer, Harvard U