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Creating Context
This poem was written by Sonia Weitz, a survivor of the Holocaust. Born in Krakow, Poland, she was 11 years old when her family and other Polish Jews were herded into ghettos. Of the 84 members of her family, she and her sister Blanca were the sole survivors of years in ghettos and concentration camps. At an early age she turned to poetry to cope with her emotions.
“Yom Ha’Shoah” is Hebrew for the Day of Holocaust Remembrance. In this poem, Weitz, a Holocaust survivor, invites others to learn about her experience while also acknowledging that this is an impossible task.
Instructions: Read the poem and answer the following questions.
FOR YOM HA’SHOAH
Come, take this giant leap with me
Into the other world...the other place
where language fails and imagery defies,
denies man’s consciousness…and dies
upon the altar of insanity.
Come, take this giant leap with me
Into the other world…the other place
and trace the eclipse of humanity…
where children burned while mankind stood by
and the universe has yet to learn why
…has yet to learn why.
- What does this poem mean to you? What questions does it raise for you?
- Sonia Weitz has been called a “survivor with a poet’s eye.” How can poetry deepen one’s understanding of the Holocaust? What can we learn from poetry that more traditional historical accounts might not capture?
- Re-read the poem and highlight the verbs Weitz uses. How do the verbs help accentuate the idea of “the other world” she describes?
- Do you think that Weitz believes it is possible to understand the horrors of the Holocaust? What can we gain by studying the brutality of the Holocaust?
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