Auschwitz By Charles Whittaker: Poem Analysis

“‘We were packed like a herd of cattle… There was no food, no drink. There were no seats so we either sat or lay down on the floor… It was very dark. There was a pale gleam coming from a vent in the roof but it was stifling and there was no water to be had.’” (Althea Williams and Sarah Ehrlich). A man by the name of Simon Gronowski escaped what to him was the “death train” when he was a boy and at 70 years of age recalls in an article by BBC news the atrocities people undergoing deportation during the Holocaust had to surpass. The Holocaust was a deportation, genocide, and mass murder of millions of people who weren’t only Jewish but. Minorities and those persecuted due to their sexual orientation; Perpetrated by Nazi Germany, millions passed away due to the atrocities committed. A poem titled “Auschwitz” by Charles Whittaker utilizes personification and enjambment as poetic devices to convey an underlying message of how

For instance, “The semiquaver chugging of the train on the track and people on board who will never go back and the terror in the eyes of all the young ones to go with no one knowing as the train comes to slow,” (Whittaker, 1-4). This stanza displays enjambment because it doesn't have any form of pause creating a type of “run-on” flow just like a train that has not come to a halt. When animals are being taken to turn into produce, the animals themselves are unaware of what is going to happen to them similar to the individuals who board the train of the unknown. Thus, the animalization of humans in Whittaker’s poem is displayed from having human beings become situated into horrendous installations as if they were tightly packed cows in a cattle car on their way to their only destination that happens to be their own death