Terra Treblinka Holocaust Poems

In his new collection Terra Treblinka: Holocaust Poems Hanoch Guy brings readers into the rough terrain of Holocaust memory. At once vivid and piercing these poems neither pretend immediacy nor do they shy away from exploring the intimacies of traumatic memory. Through these poems, Guy constructs links in the chain of memory. He shows us how extended and intimate engagements with the works of survivor poets and writers make this possible. What he recreates is not so much the physical landscape of Treblinka but rather its abiding haunting presence. These are fierce and heartbreaking poems. Bristling with passion and rage, in their specificity these poems demonstrate what it means to keep the legacy of the Holocaust alive in the present. Laura S. Levitt, Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies, and Gender, Temple University. Among other works, she is the author of American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust (2007) and an editor of Impossible Images: Contemporary Art after the Holocaust (2003).

In his first Holocaust book, Terra Treblinka, the author, explores the searing legacy of the Holocaust present in Europe and over it. In Back to Terezin, the poet tears open the lie that the Holocaust is over. It did not end in 1945. The earth is still crying with the victims’ blood; their souls flutter bitterly above death camps. Waves of Holocaust denial, hate, racism, and genocides expand and threaten to drown democracy. The poet is left with deep sorrow and visions of revenge at nights. He is immersed in mourning family members; he does not know their names but keeps searching incessantly obsessively in deserted archives and desecrated cemeteries.

Poems selected for this collection are translated from Zeitlin's Collected poems, 1965-1970 edition.

Of the 6,000,000 Jews who perished in the Holocaust, at least 160,000 were Sephardim: descendants of Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. Although the horror of the camps was recorded by members of the Sephardic community, their suffering at the hands of Nazi Germany remained virtually unknown to the rest of the world. With this collection, their long silence is broken. And the World Stood Silent gathers the Sephardim's French, Greek, Italian, and Judeo-Spanish poems, accompanied by English translations, about their long journey to the concentration and extermination camps. Isaac Jack Lévy also surveys the 2,000-year history of the Sephardim and discusses their poetry in relation to major religious, historical, and philosophical questions. Wrenchingly conveying the pathos and suffering of the Jewish community during World War II, And the World Stood Silent is invaluable as a historical account and as a documentary source.

Poems deal with the Jewish Holocaust, ikons, nature, dreams, and religion.

Poems to heal the soul (Holocaust themes, the power of touch)

Poems of the Holocaust is a sensitive reflection through poetry of the savagery and inhumanity of the Holocaust, and a determined faith in humankind. My poems are a Eulogy to our loved ones, and to all the millions that were so ruthlessly and senselessly killed. Those who have the audacity to deny the atrocities committed against the six million Jews, those are the people who would not hesitate to continue in Hitler's footsteps if they had the power. We, the survivors, are the very proof to their lies, we are the witnesses to those horrible deeds committed by a so-called 'cultured people' whose tortures surpassed those of the Middle Ages. Dedicated to my family and the six million martyrs Cecilie Klein. Cecile Klein is also the author of 'Sentenced to Live.'

For these poets, who must accommodate what they cannot ignore or deny, writing becomes a moral obligation as commemoration, catharsis, atonement, history, insistence on human sensitivities, resistance to brutalization, indifference, and flight from consequences."--BOOK JACKET.