Holocaust Blog #3 (Thursday)

Guide Questions:

1. Describe the subject of this poem. How was she dehumanized?
   
2. What did she experience upon entering the camp?
   
3. What was her act of "resistance?"
   
4. What kept her going in such a difficult existance?
   

Saving the Children
by Frieda Singer
(to Gizelle Hersh)

[from Voices of the Holocaust, Perfection Learning, 2006]
[pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp]

They had taken away
her hair
her shoes
her name a bluish number
under the skin1
her gender denied
in a sea of men
yet something of her
as she was remained.

In the barracks
where work makes one free2
she learned to stand motionless from five to ten
for Zeile Appell3
camouflaging her skin where
blemishes meant selection to the left,4
urging her sisters
who refused the moldy soup
the sawdust bread
that to eat was to resist
to eat, even to eat
the pain.



To eat, even when
the throat gagged
from the disinfecting stench;

to eat, even with
swollen ears
and frozen feet
in cubicles too narrow
to stand or sleep
where one worn blanket
was assigned to cover ten;

to swallow
even the teeth marks
of the snarling kapo guard
doubling back upon them
the injuries from above.

To remember always
that first day
when a flick of the wrist
sent her to the right
her parents to the left.

Mother, where are you,
twelve year old Katya would scream
night after night.
At sixteen, more adult than child,
she had promised
to care for the children
the promise that kept her
and them alive.

1. bluish numeral: tatoo. Jewish prisoners were given an identity number to dehumanize them.
2. work makes one free: translation of the motto above the gates of Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei.
3. Zeile Appell: roll call.
4. selection: sorting process. Healthy prisoners went to the right; the young, the old, and the ill were sent to their deaths.