Essay on Barbaric Poetry: Poetry after Auschwitz

Poetry is used to convey the extrema of emotion. After the discovery of Auschwitz, no poem could provoke as powerful of emotions in humans. There are no greater feelings of anger, disgust, and sadness than those brought about by the reading or seeing of Auschwitz. Therefore writing poetry relating to Germany emphasizing these emotions would lead to “barbaric” or primitive poetry. Poetry written about peace, love, or happiness occurring in Germany would lead to a different meaning of the word “barbaric.” Instead of being primitive, the poetry would be brutal for the poet to write and the reader to read. After Auschwitz, no poet wanted to view Germany as a peaceful, loving, and happy nation. Instead, the poets wanted to view Germans as barbarians again. Because of the way poets felt about Germans, writing a poem about anything other than the Germans being savages would be “barbaric” for poets. Therefore all poetry after Auschwitz could be classified as “barbaric” if the poetry followed one of two conditions: the poetry sought to evoke feelings of anger, disgust, and sadness, or the poetry was about Germany.

Auschwitz 1, the main camp, first came into existence in 1940 and was used as a labor camp initially holding Poles and German criminals. Similar to other concentration camps, the main purpose of Auschwitz was to provide a labor force for future projects, incarcerate those who opposed the Nazi regime, and kill specific groups of individuals Hitler deemed unfit to live. In 1941 following the construction of Auschwitz 1, the construction of the second camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was underway. Auschwitz-Birkenau contained the largest prisoner population of the three, had two gas chambers called bunker one and bunker two, and five crematoriums. In 1943, the last of the main camps was constructed. Auschwitz III or Buna was a primary labor camp forcing many of its inhabitants to produce synthetic rubber and fuels. Because it was mainly used as a facility to house laborers, a small number of inhabitants were killed in Buna. Instead, the main death camp was Auschwitz-Birkenau. With its five crematoriums and two gas chambers, Auschwitz-Birkenau was the most efficient of the camps at mass murder. This camp alone was responsible for the death of 320,000 Hungarian Jews between April and July of 1944. 

Since the existence of Auschwitz in 1940, around 1.3 million prisoners and Jews were deported there, and of those 1.3 million prisoners, 1.1 million were killed in the concentration camp. The killing happened in a variety of ways. In the main camp, prisoners were stripped of their clothes and either gassed or shot by a firing squad along what is called the “black wall.” After being killed, the dead would be transported by other prisoners to the crematorium where the bodies were burned. In Auschwitz-Berkinau, SS members used a gas known as Zyklon B to murder the prisoners in either the bunkers or the crematoriums. Within the main camp, a few prisoners were unfortunate enough to be killed by experiments conducted by Nazi doctors. 

After the fall of Germany and the liberation of those in concentration camps, testimonies about the horrors of the Holocaust, in particular Auschwitz, were revealed to the general public. One Greek Jew, Marcel Nadjari, explained his position in the concentration camp. He was responsible for the removal of dead bodies from the gas chamber and transporting them to the crematoriums where they were “burned without any fuel because of the fat they had.” Another witness explains his experience during the evacuation of Auschwitz. As the Russians and Americans closed in around Germany, the SS units forced 60,000 prisoners out of Auschwitz to march towards Gliwice or Wodzislaw. During the evacuation, those incapable of keeping up were killed. Zofia Stępień-Bator was among the prisoners who evacuated. During the march, she tried helping an exhausted little girl keep up with the pack, but the girl continued to fall behind. Eventually, Zofia found herself dragging the girl around the ground. She pleaded for help, but the only help that came was for Zofia. Someone grabbed her arm and yanked her away from the girl. Zofia recounts, “A moment later, there was a shot. It was my poor little ward, whom I had promised not to abandon.” 

To this day, the genocide that occurred in Auschwitz is one of the worst genocides the world has experienced. It has a higher death toll than the Rwandan genocide and potentially the Armenian genocide. Without another extermination event at this scale, all other poetry aimed to evoke emotions of anger, sadness, and disgust would be subpar, primal, or “barbaric” when compared to the poems written about Auschwitz.

German civilians and immigrants suffered persecution from their own country and opposing countries throughout WWII. However, after the discovery of Auschwitz and other concentration camps, discrimination and hate for Germans increased drastically. German civilians attempted to atone for their countries actions by accepting Jewish people who had survived the concentration camps into their homes. However, many people, especially the Jews, refused to believe Germans this as an act of kindness. Instead, they believed the Germans accepted outsides because it was required to avoid punishment. Adam Sulkowicz, a surviving member of the Holocaust said, “They were nice. They had to be nice” (Page 419 Germany a Nation in Its Time, Smith). As opposing soldiers marched through war-torn Germany, the rape of millions of German women and girls was carried out by the Soviet and United States forces. Women were brutalized during the rape, were left sick with STDs, or died attempting to receive an abortion. To defend themselves from the abusive soldiers, German women would allow non-abusive soldiers to rape them in exchange for protection as mentioned in A Women in Berlin. Unfortunately, this unspeakable crime was ignored by Russians, Americans, and even Germans until the 1990s. 

The mass rape of German women was not the only crime ignored by the United States. During the Nuremberg trials, German officers and high-ranking officials were punished for the crimes against humanity they committed within the concentration camps. However, the United State and the United Kingdom were not convicted of the war crimes they committed themselves. Both of the powers were responsible for the bombing of German cities, and the death of hundreds of thousands of German civilians that happened during the raids. To the other countries, these casualties were a necessity to the war and were used to destroy German morale. However, the bombings were excessive, and one witness, Alfred Döblin, describes the destroyed town of Pforzheim as “skeletons of houses standing next to skeletons of houses and behind the skeletons a chaotic mass of rubble” (Page 414 Germany a Nation in Its Time, Smith). However, no action was taken against either of these powers because many believed Germany and its inhabitants deserved to be punished for the acts they committed and weren’t human but rather barbarians because of the acts they committed. 

After the public exposure of Auschwitz to the world, a change of opinion about Germany and its inhabitants struck the world. People from within their country as well as outside of their country no longer viewed them as humans. Instead, Germans were viewed as barbaric. Jewish people leaving concentration camps refused to look or speak to German inhabitants, mass rape occurred leading to the abuse and death of thousands of women, and crimes of war committed against Germany were neglected. Because of this change of opinions, any poetry written about Germany or its inhabitants working against the idea that Germans are savages would be brutal for the author to write and the reader to read. It would force other people to accept that humans are capable of committing these unspeakable acts of terror. To avoid this realization, all poetry written about Germany and after Auschwitz refused to focus on the happy, peaceful, and loving parts of Germany.