The Holocaust: Poem Analysis

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He stands, stamps a little in his boots, rubs his hands. He’s cold in the morning breeze: a diligent angel, who has worked hard for his promotions.
Suddenly he thinks he’s made a mistake: all eyes, he counts again in the open notebook all the bodies waiting for him in the square camp within camp: only I am not there, am not there, am a mistake, turn off my eyes, quickly, erase my shadow.
I shall not want. The sum will be in order without me: here forever.

This poem is complex because it can be interpreted in many ways. More specifically, it can be interpreted two, one of the ways to look at this is to review it from the viewpoint of a German officer or a survival that was in the camp and escaped. The poem points out that the officer is a serious and hard working person who was promoted to a position to do the roll call in the camp. While making the call he noticed that someone is missing, “suddenly he thinks he’s made a mistake: all eyes, he counts again in the open notebook. “ It is …show more content…

What made me to precise that this poem is about the holocaust is this line, “all the bodies waiting for him in the square” seem to be like the dead bodies of people that the S.S. officer has called and kill is waiting to be cremated in a room of a square.
What surprised me about this poem is that the person who survived from the catastrophes of the Shoah thinks he is a mistake by surviving. I don’t think he is a mistake, because without his/her stories, today we would not be able to understand and comprehend what happened during the holocaust. Watching many survivor accounts and reading stories about the holocaust, I know that sometimes roll call in the camp is not a good thing because sometimes people could not know where to they would end up, either in a gas chamber or get killed by S.S.

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