Harps of Birkenau: The Auschwitz Poems

I recently took a school trip out to Berlin and Krakow during which we visited among many places the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camps. The visit came after being in Berlin and seeing the Jewish Museum, Oscar Schindler's factory and the Berlin Wall and was in many respects the main visit of the trip. I have taught some of the literature of the holocaust before but whilst at Auschwitz came across an anthology called The Auschwitz Poems, edited by Adam A. Zych.

It seems incredible after visiting the camp and seeing close-up how the extermination of a whole race was planned and implemented that amidst the terror and anguish of this time, many poems were written in the camp as well as after the camp was liberated. Some of these are by former inmates, relatives or visitors.

It is hard not to feel overwhelmed by the mystery of iniquity in a place like Auschwitz, nor to reel at its radical nature. Walking the site, the horror that unfolded there can be difficult to grasp. It was a hot day on our visit and I began to feel distinctly light-headed as a result of both the heat and the experience. But the poems in this anthology are, if anything, a testament to the ability of life to ultimately triumph over death as we believe as Christians that it does. They are a testament so often to the human spirit's desire for transcendence even amidst the most terrible of circumstances:

"Creative writing in concentration camps, gulags, and prisons revealed that even in the most difficult conditions one could and must remain a human being - a creative being - and not the helpless convict condemned to scorn and annihilation." (Adam A. Zych, Introduction)

Many voices are represented her, including those of the famous such as Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Czeslaw Milosz, Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell. But the less well-known or even unknown also predominate here such as Shelli Jankowski-Smith whose poem The Death of Maximilian Kolbe I especially like. We were able to visit Kolbe's last cell in the basement of the notorious Cell Block 11, also known in the camp as the 'Death Block'. Photography is forbidden there and all that adorns Kolbe's cell are two large candles and a wreath on the wall.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe's story perhaps more than anything illustrates that evil does not have the last word. That in the last analysis, evil is only defeated by love. Father Kolbe's exchange of his life for that of another prisoner reminds us that standing against and overcoming evil is costly; in the face of the most radical evil, Kolbe understood that only the most radical love could meet and overcome it. By modelling Christ's love in and through his death, Father Kolbe gave hope to hundreds of prisoners. Says the ending of Janowski-Smith's poem:

"There is, at least, no solitude in the grave. The communion
of saints is always with us. We walk
in the ashes of saints, we breath the dust of martyrs."

And the blood of martyrs, as Tertullian once wrote, is the seed of the Church. I will only mention one other voice here for now, the voice of Zofia Grochowalska-Abramovich who is sometimes referred to 'the poet of Auschwitz'. Her story is a fascinating one and is taken up here by Cherie Braun along with one of Abramovich's poems, the beautiful The Fragrance of Lindens.

Zofia Grochowalska-Abramovich, a Polish Christian working for the resistance spent four years in Ravensbruck and Auschwitz and when the allies were coming, buried her poems in a jar at Auschwitz. This, according to Braun was later recovered by another camp inmate. Any literary activity in the camps was forbidden which is perhaps why some of her work appears fragmentary, like this from a haunting piece called The Harps of Birkenau:

"Smoke floats, thick foul smoke...
People burn people here.

And on luminous poles
stretched wires shine.
These are the harps of Brzezinka,
harps of Birkenau."

Brzezinka means 'birch forest' but also refers to a small Polish village about two miles from Auschwitz. Its double meaning suggests both the human destruction at Auschwitz but also the use of the forest to hide the instruments of extermination, the gas chambers and the crematoria.

Here, the harp - instrument of praise in the Psalms but also of lamentation - is equated with imprisonment and suffering and with the wire fences surrounding the camp. More specifically we might see an identification with the suffering in exile of the Jews in Psalm 137 who hung up their harps by the River Babylon in grief at their captivity.

Despite this, Grochowalska-Abramovich did not hang up her harp, but wrote in protest at the inhuman suffering she witnessed around her. Like many others in this anthology, her words are both memorable and important as a testament of hope to the ability of the person to retain their freedom even when everything has apparently been taken away.

Images: Book cover to "The Auschwitz Poems", Inscription on one of four tombstones at Birkenau for all the dead of Auschwitz; Saint Maximilian Kolbe; Crematorium through birches, Auschwitz-Birkenau.