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Benjamin Snow
Professor Dan Laor
Representations of the Holocaust in Hebrew/Israeli Literature
26 April 2014

Poetry of the Holocausts Second Generation


The poetry of the children of Holocaust survivors is powerful in its
breadth and its depth, in its simplicity and in its complexity. In sociological
and psychological literature, these people have been called the second
generation, with the implication that their lives are deeply impacted by the
Holocaust, nearly as much as the people who lived through the concentration
camps and other atrocities. The effects of the Holocaust and their
intergenerational depth are better left to scholars in other disciplines, but
they have certainly affected the minds and the poetry of these authors.
One of the problems of studying the poetry of the second generation is
translation. Some authors work in English, but many who deal with the
Holocaust grew up in Israel, and they consequently work in Yiddish or
Hebrew. Academia has given much attention to the survivors of the
Holocaust and translating their works Eli Wiesel, Primo Levi, Aharon
Appelfeld, and scores of others are well known around the world for their
works on the subject. There has been a great deal of work on secondgeneration fiction, but second-generation poets have not received the same
sort of attention. For this reason, this paper will be limited by the lack of

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readily available English translations of the texts. Since some poets have
worked in English, their poetry has also been included.
Four major themes emerge when studying second-generation poetry.
The life of Abraham, with a particular emphasis on the binding of Isaac, is an
extremely popular symbol. The interplay of death and birth is another
popular topic. The everyday reminders of the Holocaust are yet another
thematic element. Lastly, some authors deal with the effects of the
Holocaust directly, without using metaphor or Biblical figures.
The first of the major themes that emerges from these poems is the
binding of Isaac, which is found in the book of Genesis and involves God,
Abraham, and Abrahams son, Isaac. The first stanza of Yossi Kleins Plea
alludes to this story heavily. It has been included here from Living after the
Holocaust.
If there be 50 righteous men in Auschwitz
who walked to the mountain to pray every Sabbath
hand in hand with little Isaac,
body thin as side-curls,
raised as a Jew to be sheared
Send the ram back to the forest.
Only grant Abraham the shoichets blade
whose soft breath is merciful death. (85)
Klein packs a great deal of symbolism into this stanza. Walking to the
mountain refers to Abrahams trek up the mountain for the sacrifice of his
son, Isaac. The phrase body thin as side-curls refers to the emaciation
experienced in the concentration camps and also the practice of not shaving
the corners of mens facial hair (Leviticus 21:5). Klein uses a great deal of
sheep symbolism. Isaac is to be sheared and to take the place of the

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sacrificial ram. Shearing in this case could refer to the practice of shaving the
heads of interned people, as well as a metaphorical shearing of Isaacs life.
The last two lines form a plea for Abraham to be butchered, since shoichet
simply means butcher. These lines seem to imply that it would be better for
Abraham to sacrifice himself for Isaacs sake. The internal rhyme in the last
line adds a graceful touch to an otherwise gruesome stanza.
The story of Abraham returns in Kleins fifth stanza. Having gone
through different people interned at the camp men, women, the elderly,
and invalids, he ends with children. Klein says
If there be 10 children in Auschwitz,
A single fetus clinging to the womb.
Your laughter, Sarah: dont stop it.
Dont stop it, Sarah,
dont stop it
Summon Gods angels from the watchtowers,
and return their gift of little bones.
You are much too old to have a son. (86)
Sarah is the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac. This stanza alludes to
the story of Isaacs birth, when God in the guise of three men (Genesis 18:12) visited Abraham and told him that he would have a son. Abraham and
Sarah were both very old the way of women had ceased for Sarah
(Genesis 18:11), and when Sarah heard the news, she laughed (Genesis
18:12), denied it, and was ashamed (Genesis 18:15). The poet pleads thrice
with Sarah not to stop laughing, to bring a little bit of hope into a dark world.
Isaac may very well be the single fetus clinging to the womb, and Sarahs
laughter may in this case usher in the much-needed hope. The line Summon
Gods angels from the watchtowers refers to the angel that came down to

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stop Abraham from actually killing Isaac (Genesis 22:12). This angel also
revealed that this had been an exercise of faith (Genesis 22:12), and that
Abrahams willingness to sacrifice his son whom he loved very much would
be greatly rewarded with as many descendants as there are stars in the sky
or grains of sand on a beach (Genesis 22:17-18).
The beginning line of each stanza refers to Genesis 18:24-32. In this
passage, Abraham asks God about the possibility of sparing Sodom.
Abraham asks whether fifty, forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, or ten righteous
people would be enough to spare the city. Klein omits a stanza about fortyfive people and instead asks about fifty men, forty women, thirty invalids,
twenty elderly, and ten children of Auschwitz in each stanza. In the last
stanza, he begs down to a single innocent fetus, making painfully clear the
desperation of the Jewish people to be rescued from this atrocity. The line in
the first stanza Send the ram back to the forest, adds emphasis to the
story of the binding of Isaac while linking it with the symbolism of the sheep
as an innocent bystander.
The Sacrifice by Moshe Yungman uses the story of the binding of
Isaac while trying to come to terms with the psychological impact of the
Holocaust. It can be found in Living after the Holocaust: Reflections by
Children of Survivors in America and has been reprinted here to aid in
analysis.
Links of fear
slowly become a chain,
binding my hands and feet.

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My father never wanted
to lead me to the sacrifice.
He was bound as I was.
But he led me.
Now I lie on the altar,
my father inside me,
my grandfather inside me.
There is no escape
no escape (64).
The links of fear to which Yungman refers are psychological trauma. People
who go through cataclysmic events like the Holocaust often fear, even on a
subconscious level, that they will be put through similar circumstances again.
Parents who love their children often try to keep them from trauma, though
this has varying degrees of success. Yungmans father tried but failed to
keep the tragedy of the Holocaust from influencing his sons life because he
could not shake off the links of fear that had become a chain around his own
hands and feet. The line Now I lie on the altar, makes Moshe Yungman a
stand-in for Isaac. Moshe must deal with but can never escape the influence
of his father and grandfather and the influence of the Holocaust on them all.
Rivka Miriam is another poet who uses the binding of Isaac as a poetic
inspiration. Her poem, So, By the Altar, states twice that Isaac wanted to
stay by the altar, that he wanted to turn back time and not exist at all. The
second stanza implies that Abraham also wanted rid of Isaac, perhaps to try
again with a new son, or maybe even his younger son, Ishmael. The line
many as the stars refers to Gods promise to Abraham to have as many
descendants as there are stars in the sky (Genesis 22:17). In Miriams poem,

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Sarah does not laugh at her own impossible chances of giving birth, but she
laughs at Abrahams old, brittle loins (77). This apparently is a great
embarrassment to Abraham, as he wanted to return Isaac to his loins (77).
The last stanza of the poem implies that Abraham kills Isaac. The ram was
chewing the grass, not lying on the altar, and the angel never came (77).
Why is the binding of Isaac such a powerful symbol in the poetry of the
second generation? Of all the stories in the Torah, why do poets use this
particular story so often? Why do they not use the story of Esther, the young
woman who dealt with the persecution of her people by facing her husband
under penalty of death? Why do they not use the story of Moses, who led his
people to safety after dealing with Pharaohs hardened heart and horrible
plagues? Would their persecution not be a more apt metaphor for the
persecution suffered under the Nazis? Why do they not use Jacob, who
wrestled with a heavenly being and received a new name and a new life?
Abraham, his son Isaac, and his son Jacob are the patriarchs of
Judaism. Isaac is at times a symbol for the Jewish people as a whole, who
hope for an angel to save them while they are being slaughtered. In other
cases, Abraham and his wife Sarah symbolize the parents of the poets, while
their son Isaac often symbolizes the poets themselves. Abrahams reactions
in these poets eyes range from self-sacrifice to regretting having children.
The binding of Isaac is powerful because it gives these poets a vehicle to
express frustration with the effects of the Holocaust on their parents and
their childhood.

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The inordinate focus some people, especially in the media, place on
the Jewish armed resistance to the Nazis would make the story of Esther a
more logical choice. However, the Jews were allowed to resist Hamans plan
through a decree passed by the king (Esther 8:11). It was in fact the entire
government and not the evil advisor who wanted to wipe Jews off the face of
the earth. European Jews were not given a decree to defend themselves
against slaughter and were instead mercilessly decimated. This is perhaps
the reason poets choose not to use the story of Esther.
The story of Moses, then, might be a more appropriate choice. It is a
story of subjugated Jews who gradually lose their freedoms as with the
Nuremburg Laws and later received their freedom after the hard-hearted
dictator could no longer stand the destruction of his nation. After the
Holocaust, a state was expressly founded in the Levant for Jewish people,
which echoes the escape of the Jews across the Red Sea. This story may not
be used because Hitlers Germany was not plagued with locusts, water
turning to blood, and the other plagues. The war that was waged across
Europe by other nations to defeat the Nazis may also contribute to poets
seeking another set of symbolic characters and actions.
The story of Abraham and Isaac is a much better choice than the
others because it can be seen as an act of betrayal. Abraham led Isaac to
believe that God would provide a ram for the slaughter (Genesis 22:8), not
knowing that he himself would be put on the altar as a potential sacrifice
(Genesis 22:2). Likewise, Jews and Gentiles had coexisted peacefully for

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generations before the rise of anti-Semitism and Hitler, and many had
assimilated into the dominant culture. In this case, Isaac represents the
Jewish people and Abraham represents the Gentiles. [I feel like I should say
something more here.]
These three poets use the story of the binding of Isaac in drastically
different ways. Yossi Klein set Plea during the Holocaust at Auschwitz, while
Moshe Yungman sets The Sacrifice after the Holocaust and Rivka Miriam
sets So, By the Altar in Biblical times in the Near East. Kleins poem would
not work if it were set after the Holocaust because it is written as a plea from
someone looking at the horrors of Auschwitz perhaps from the inside that
would be rendered moot if the camp had already been liberated. Likewise, if
it were set before the Holocaust, the horrors of Auschwitz would be
unimaginable and the poem would again not work. Yungman, on the other
hand, uses the binding of Isaac to talk on a psychological level about the
effects of the Holocaust on his life. Miriam sets her poem in Biblical times,
but uses Abraham as a metaphor for her parents to highlight the
ambivalence her parents felt raising a child in a post-Holocaust world.
Another topic that plays a huge role in second-generation poetry is the
interplay of life and death. They have had a great impact on humanity since
the dawn of time, but they have a special impact on the second generation
as parents and grandparents who survived the Holocaust have died and
children have been born in intervening years. It is understandable that
survivors poetry deals with life and death during the Holocaust, but it is

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interesting that the second generation also respectfully and reflectively
carries this theme. Anne Michaels says in her poem The Hooded Hawk that
History is the love that enters us through death (173), and the Holocaust
survivors who left children behind have transcended the realm of the living
into history through their death. Two poems from Dreaming the Actual
immediately come to mind when discussing the interplay of life and death:
Agi Mishols Gravity, Death, and Esther Ettingers Believe Me. These two
poems contrast death and life, respectively.
Agi Mishol writes of coming to terms with the death of her father. She
starts with his mental decay by mentioning his will to resist. She then
discusses his physical decay his hair, his jaw, his foot, and his skin. She
then metaphorically sits with him, listening to his rent phrases (339), and
deals with losing him. In doing this, she uses her fathers death to cope with
and befriend her own inevitable death (339). Mishols father was a
Holocaust survivor. Metaphorically, his death is the death of how the world
used to be.
Esther Ettinger, on the other hand, deals with the birth of a child. She
uses two very Biblically reminiscent phrases in the original Hebrew. Midway
through the poem, she says shone with light bluer than the bottom of the
sea (306). Miriyam Glazer, the editor of Dreaming the Actual, notes that the
phrase the bottom of the sea is found in Genesis 1:2 (306). By using this
phrase from the creation story, Ettinger underscores the creation of new life.
The final line of the poem weeping as he goes, weeping , (307) comes

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from Psalm 126, which Glazer notes is a psalm of joy after sorrow (307).
Likewise, the very process of birth is often a period of joy after a trying time.
This poem is timeless, since there are no references to a specific time.
However, the child being born in this poem may be a representative of the
second generation, who provides joy to families who have survived a great
atrocity. The mother and child are not given names and referred to in an
almost abstract way. This may be a clue that Ettinger is using the mother
and child as symbols for the birth of the entire second generation.
Rivka Miriam deals with death and birth in a very unusual way.
Throughout her works, she uses the return of the human body to its
constituent fluids as a metaphor. So, By the Altar explicitly mentions
umbilical cords and sperm (77). I Told Him Father mentions blood and seed
(93). Jerusalem mentions egg and seed (153). She extends this metaphor
further in Jerusalem to a chair on which she will not sit becoming a cedar
again (153). These may represent a return to simplicity, to a more idyllic
time. Perhaps they represent guilt or unease with being a product of a
chaotic time.
Her use of semen as a metaphor is peculiar. Blood seems to be a more
common choice in poems and in common speech. For example, people say
they are related by blood, not by egg and seed. This may be a reflection of
our modern understanding of genetics, but it is more likely a statement
about the subject matter. In using semen as a metaphor, Miriam chooses not

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to hide the difficult subject matter behind flowery terms. Instead, she uses a
primal fluid to [Im not exactly sure how to finish this thought.]
However, this is not the only way in which she deals with death. Rivka
Miriam has a conversation with her presumably dead grandmother about the
gas chambers in her poem Tell Me, Grandma Asked (223). She deals with
suffocation delicately, saying that her grandmother forgot how to breathe
and that the air was too thick (223). Miriam visited the camps and found the
word Shma scratched into the wall by a fingernail (223), at least
metaphorically. The word shma hear is a command, as in the prayer
that begins "" . Since it is a command, it is a reminder
to the reader to listen to the stories of survivors. The last letter, the , is
pronounced like the word ayin eye. The ayin is half-closed, which refers
both to the letter and to the eyes of viewers who shield themselves from
such atrocities.
Yossi Klein writes more about the interplay of life and death in his other
verses of Plea. When discussing the elderly, Klein pleads for soft beds and
family pictures comforts generally given to those who die at home or in a
hospital (85). When discussing the invalids, Klein pleads that the doctors
have decorum as they dissect these people (86). Klein emphasizes that the
Nazis had more respect for a colony of germs found in the body than they
had for invalids and other people in the concentration camps (86), and this
underscores the cruelty with which people can treat one another.

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Anne Michaels touches on many topics in her poem, The Hooded
Hawk, but death is prominent. The poem is dedicated for A.W. and is
addressed to a constant you, who is most likely A.W. Toward the end of the
poem, Michaels claims that sorrow magnifies through the generations
(176), which appears to be something she learned after this persons death.
Toward the beginning of the poem, Michaels states that History is the love
that enters us through death (173), and at toward the end, she says Since
you died, love has opened every place that wont open (177). Michaels does
not make clear who A.W. is and what the relationship between Michaels and
A.W. was. Perhaps A.W. was a Holocaust survivor whom Michaels knew. She
says that A.W. is childless (176), but in the same stanza mentions a daughter
(176). The daughter may be A.W.s story of survival, since it is nearly as old
as the paper on which it is written.
The third of the most important themes that emerges in secondgeneration poetry is the everyday reminders of the Holocaust. For example,
Anne Michaels mentions the silver spoon in your kitchen drawer, swastika
on its handle in her poem The Hooded Hawk as one such everyday
reminder (173). Serving a cauliflower as the main Thanksgiving dish was an
intentional symbol, since cauliflowers were picked at one of the
concentration camps (175). In doing this, Michaels family subverts the
traditional Thanksgiving turkey and instead introduces an entirely nontraditional food to a holiday originally meant to celebrate a bountiful harvest.
Michaels family is by no means the only family to use food as a symbol of

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the Holocaust. Cipora Katz is a Chicago-area Holocaust survivor who spent
more than three years in a Ukrainian veterinarians silo surviving on little but
potatoes. At the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie, Illinois, she said that
she would rather choose a potato over a steak because the potato reminds
her of the suffering she has been through and the family she has lost.
Leah Aini uses the everyday acts of combing ones hair and bathing in
a sad and strange way. She starts with reminiscing about her grandmother
helping her bathe and comb her hair as a small child (352). She paints a
happy scene with her words. Then Aini tells of falling in love with a man who
gently combed her hair (352). Passion bubbles foamed on either his
hand or her hair this she does not make clear (352). These bubbles had
nothing to do with cleanliness (352). The poem then takes a dark turn when
it discusses her other grandmother, who died in Auschwitz (353). Aini makes
combing sinister when the gas combed the cement walls / to find sky
(353). She also manages to make bathing sinister as the sky of Auschwitz /
refused to be bathed / unless my grandmother turned first into / soap (353).
None of these authors mentions physical injuries sustained in the
Holocaust; they never mention scars or tattoos. Many of these authors hint
at psychological scarring, but they never refer to physical reminders of the
Holocaust with which survivors must live. The tattooed numbers received
when people arrived at the camps are neither badges of pride nor shame,
nor are scars from torture carried out in the name of scientific advancement.

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The last major theme that emerges in second-generation poetry is
dealing with the Holocaust in an unvarnished manner. Jason Sommer does
this in the poem What They Saw in his book The Man Who Sleeps in My
Office. In the first line, out of the depths of (3) refers to Psalm 130,
which traditionally begins Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord
(King James Version). Sommer contrasts the stick figures in tatters with
the striders in uniforms (3). He also contrasts the yellow star of the
dandelion with the matured dandelions globe of seed. The yellow star of the
dandelion obviously symbolizes the stars of David that Jews were legally
forced to wear as marginalized citizens and later in the concentration camps.
These dandelions together symbolize the little bit of hope that some people
in the concentration camps must have kept alive, but they also symbolize
the end of life and consequently the end of hope that many met in the
camps.
In her poem Into Arrival, Anne Michaels writes with the voice of
someone who is looking forward to going east. This poem brings to mind the
Nazi promises of jam, bread, and work that were used to round up Jews for
ghettoization and transport. The first stanza paints an idyllic picture of the
train ride and the new city in which the Jews were to live. Though not
explicitly made, it conjures up Moses traveling to the Promised Land. It also
sets up a story of two unnamed lovers. Their hoping contrasts starkly with
the horrors these two lovers probably experienced. The poem is not written
in the first person, which would be a sort of Come away, darling, to the

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promised land. It is instead written in the third person [and this is important
for a reason.]
When discussing the Holocaust, poets only sometimes mention camps
by name. When they do mention camps, the most often mentioned is
Auschwitz. This is understandable due to the atrocities suffered within its
walls, but it is strange that the other camps are not mentioned with nearly
the same frequency. Perhaps this is due to there being more survivors from
the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. Perhaps this is due to the name recognition
that Auschwitz brings, symbolizing all of the camps under the name of the
vilest example.
In conclusion, second-generation poets have expressed four major
themes in dealing with their parents tragedy, which in many ways has
become their own. These themes are the binding of Isaac, the interplay of
life and death, the everyday reminders of the Holocaust, and the Holocaust
as a phenomenon. Their works have only recently begun to be translated
into English, despite many of these poets being in their fifties and sixties
nearly all of the sources for this paper were translated and compiled in the
last fifteen years. In spite of this slow translation movement for the second
generation, there are works about and by the third generation now
appearing. [This kind of trails off. Help.]

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Works Cited
Aini, Leah. Shower. Trans. Linda Zisquit. Dreaming the Actual:
Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Israeli Women Writers. Ed.
Miriyam Glazer. Albany, NY: State U of New York, 2000. 352-53. Print.
Ettinger, Esther. Believe Me. Trans. Mariana Barr. Dreaming the Actual:
Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Israeli Women Writers. Ed.
Miriyam Glazer. Albany, NY: State U of New York, 2000. 306-07. Print.
Klein, Yossi. Plea. Living after the Holocaust: Reflections by Children of
Survivors in America. Revised 2nd ed. New York: Bloch, 1979. 85-86.
Print.
Michaels, Anne. The Hooded Hawk. Poems: The Weight of Oranges, Miner's
Pond, and Skin Divers. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2000. 173-177. Print.
Miriam, Rivka. So, By the Altar. Trans. Linda Zisquit. These Mountains:
Selected Poems of Rivka Miriam. New Milford, CT: Toby, 2009. 77. Print.
Mishol, Agi. Gravity, Death. Trans. Tsipi Keller. Dreaming the Actual:
Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Israeli Women Writers. Ed.
Miriyam Glazer. Albany, NY: State U of New York, 2000. 339. Print.
Sommer, Jason. What They Saw. The Man Who Sleeps in My Office.
Chicago: U of Chicago, 2004. 3-4. Print.
The Holy Bible. n.p.: National Publishing Company, 1982. Print.
Torah. New York: Union for Reform Judaism, 2006. Print.
Yungman, Moshe. The Sacrifice. Trans. Marcia Falk. Living after the
Holocaust: Reflections by Children of Survivors in America. Revised 2nd

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ed. New York: Bloch, 1979. 64. Print.

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