Suggested Readings for Holocaust Memorial Day 2016
Don’t Stand By
Introduction
These readings are provided for possible use in commemorative events, whether in schools
or in the wider community, for Holocaust Memorial Day 2016. This year’s theme is Don’t Stand
By and this is directly addressed, in different forms, by the first nine texts, which encompass
the themes of ‘bystanders’, rescue and resistance. The last four readings, meanwhile, highlight
the broader questions of loss and remembrance which form an essential focus of Holocaust
Memorial Day
At the same time, the readings are appropriate for a classroom setting. They can be used in
a number of subjects to facilitate discussion of key issues arising from the Holocaust. In History
and English especially, the poems represented here could additionally be used to explore the
value and possible limitations of literature as historical evidence. It is also worth stressing that
many of the poems are works of great literary merit.
The texts represent a range of literary styles with varying levels of complexity so teachers
should naturally decide which are appropriate to different age and ability groups. Brief
background notes for each reading are provided at the end of this document.
Cover image: Righteous Among the Nations medal; Righteous Among the Nations is a title awarded by Yad Vashem, Israel’s
national Holocaust museum and remembrance authority, to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the era of the
Holocaust.
You Onlookers
Whose eyes watched the killing.
As one feels a stare at one’s back
You feel on your bodies
The glances of the dead.
How many dying eyes will look at you
When you pluck a violet from its hiding place?
How many hands will be raised in supplication
In the twisted martyr-like branches
Of old oaks?
How much memory grows in the blood
Of the evening sun?
O the unsung cradlesongs
In the night cry of the turtledove—
Many a one might have plucked stars from the sky,
Now the old must well do it for them!
You onlookers,
You who raised no hand in murder,
But who did not shake the dust
From your longing,
You who halted there, where dust is changed
To light.
Nelly Sachs
Refugee Blues
Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.
The consul banged the table and said,
‘If you've got no passport you're officially dead’:
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’:
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, ‘They must die’:
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.
Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.
Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
W. H. Auden
Nobel acceptance speech, 1986
I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the
kingdom of night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so
fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history
of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
I remember: he asked his father: "Can this be true?" This is the twentieth century, not the
Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain
silent?
And now the boy is turning to me: "Tell me," he asks. "What have you done with my future?
What have you done with your life?"
And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight
those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remain silent.
And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure
suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never
the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must
interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national
borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because
of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the centre
of the universe.
Elie Wiesel
Protest!
In the Warsaw Ghetto, behind a wall that is cutting them off from the world, several hundred
thousand condemned people await death. No hope of survival exists for them, and no help is
coming from anywhere…
All perish: the rich and poor, the old, the women, the men, the youth, the babies…
The world looks upon this murder, more horrible than anything history has ever seen, and
stays silent. The slaughter of millions of defenceless people is being carried out amid general
sinister silence… The perishing Jews are surrounded by Pilates who deny all guilt.
This silence can no longer be tolerated. Whatever the reason for it, it is vile. In the face of
murder it is wrong to remain passive. Whoever is silent witnessing murder becomes a partner
to the murder. Whoever does not condemn, consents…
We do not want to be Pilates… we protest from the bottom of our hearts filled with pity,
indignation and horror. This protest is demanded of us by God, who does not allow us to kill…
Every being calling itself human has the right to love his fellow man.
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, Warsaw, August 1942
1980
And when I go up as a pilgrim in winter, to recover
the place I was born, and the twin to self I am in my mind,
then I'll go in black snow as a pilgrim to find
the grave of my saviour, Yanova.
She'll hear what I whisper, under my breath:
Thank you. You saved my tears from the flame.
Thank you. Children and grandchildren you rescued from death.
I planted a sapling (it doesn't suffice) in your name.
Time in its gyre spins back down the flue
faster than nightmares of nooses can ride,
quicker than nails. And you, my saviour, in your cellar you'll hide
me, ascending in dreams as a pilgrim to you.
You'll come from the yard in your slippers, crunching the snow
so I'll know. Again I'm there in the cellar, degraded and low,
you're bringing me milk and bread sliced thick at the edge.
You're making the sign of the cross. I'm making my pencil its pledge.
Abraham Sutzkever
The rescue of the Jews of Denmark
The small crowd that gathered in Lyngby on the night of 2nd October, the night of the raids,
with the decision to send the endangered Jews to Sweden, knew nothing about resources or
options, and what they thought they knew turned out to be wrong… We lived inland, far from
suitable harbours. We had no special knowledge of the coast, knew nothing of sailing, had no
connections with the fishermen and skippers, had no money to pay with, and had not as much
as a dinghy to sail with, since the Germans had long since ordered all boats not used for
commercial purposes away from the coast. The legal government had been ousted, all of the
organs of executive authority were under German control, and despite their best will, we could
only count on limited support from the police… But one thing is certain...: If the helpers of Jews
had no other assets, we had the wish to help these people.
Aage Bertelsen
The last letter of Youra Livchitz
Dear Mother,
Although the words are powerless to express all that I feel, I leave this cell to go to the other
side of life with calm – a calm that is also resignation in the face of the inevitable. To tell you
that I regret all that has happened would serve no purpose. I very much regret not being there
to help to support you in the first trial – that which you have already suffered: Choura [Youra’s
brother who had already been executed]. I wanted to be there so that the two of us could
struggle with the world as it is. Dear Mother, do not cry too much thinking about your little one.
My life has been full first and foremost of errors. I think of all our friends who are in prison and
ask their forgiveness. Remember me without sorrow. I have had the best, most excellent
companions until the end and even now I do not feel alone. My best wishes to all. Dear Mother,
I have to say goodbye, time passes. Once again, it is not the last moments that have been the
hardest. Have confidence and courage in life, time erases many things. Think of us as dead
on the front, think of all the families, all the mothers affected by the war, the war that we had
all believed would finish earlier.
Your loving son,
Youra
Youra Livchitz, Breendonk fortress, February 1944
From a manifesto of the Jewish Combat Organisation
Poles, citizens, freedom fighters!
From out of the roar of the cannon with which the German army is battering our homes, the
dwellings of our mothers, children, and wives;
From out of the reports of machine-guns which we have captured from the cowardly police
and SS men;
From out of the smoke of fires and the blood of the murdered Warsaw Ghetto, we – imprisoned
in the ghetto – send you our heartfelt fraternal greetings….
A battle is being waged for your freedom and ours.
For your and our human, civic, and national honour and dignity.
We shall avenge the crimes of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bełżec, Majdanek!
Long live the brotherhood of arms and blood of fighting Poland!
Long live freedom!
Jewish Combat Organisation, Warsaw, 23rd April 1943
The last testament of David Graber
I would love to live to see the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and shriek to
the world proclaiming the truth. So the world may know all. So the ones who did not live
through it may be glad, and we may feel like veterans with medals on our chest. We would be
the fathers, the teachers and educators of the future… But no, we shall certainly never live to
see it, and therefore do I write my last will. May the treasure fall into good hands, may it last
into better times, may it alarm and alert the world to what happened and was played out in the
twentieth century…
We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest for us.
David Graber, Warsaw, 3rd August 1942
Monument
For heroes – poems, rhapsodies!!!
For heroes the homage of posterity,
their names engraved on plinths
and a monument of marble.
For valiant soldiers – medals!
For soldiers’ deaths a cross!
Conjure the glory and suffering
into steel, granite and bronze.
Legends will remain after the great,
that they were colossal,
The myth will congeal and – become
THE MONUMENT.
But who will tell you, future generations,
not about bronze or mythic themes –
but that they took her – killed her,
and that she is no more …
Was she good? Not really –
she often quarrelled after all,
slammed the door, scolded…
but she was.
Pretty? She was never pretty,
even before her hair silvered.
Wise? Well, quite ordinary, not stupid…
But… she was.
Understand – she was, and now when she is not,
every corner here has evil eyes
and immediately sees that she is no more.
Władysław Szlengel
Toys
My daughter, you must care for your toys,
Poor things, they’re even smaller than you.
Every night, when the fire goes to sleep,
Cover them with the stars of the tree.
Let the golden pony graze
The cloudy sweetness of the field.
Lace up the little boy’s boots
When the sea-eagle blows cold.
Tie a straw hat on your doll
And put a bell in her hand.
For not one of them has a mother,
And so they cry out to God.
Love them, your little princesses—
I remember a cursed night
When there were dolls left in all seven streets
Of the city. And not one child.
Abraham Sutzkever
The Jewish Shtetl
And once,
there was a garden,
and a child,
and a tree.
And once,
there was a father,
and a mother,
and a dog.
And once,
there was a house,
and a sister,
and a grandma.
And once,
there was life.
Anonymous
Shema
You who live secure
In your warm houses,
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.
Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.
Primo Levi
Notes on the readings
‘You Onlookers’
Nelly Sachs (1891-1970) was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Berlin. Although she
wrote poetry from an early age, her reputation as a writer rests on the poems and plays she
produced following her flight, with her elderly mother, from Nazi persecution to Sweden in May
1940; she remained in Sweden after the war, taking citizenship in 1952. Her first volume of
poetry, In den Wohnungen des Todes (In the Houses of Death), published in 1947, addressed
Jewish suffering both in the Holocaust and earlier in history through vivid use of metaphor, a
pattern repeated and developed in later works. She was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1966 with the Israeli writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon.
‘You Onlookers’, taken from In den Wohnungen des Todes, bitterly admonishes those who
took no part in the murder process but did nothing to stop it, in effect asking them what they
did (or did not do) during the Holocaust but also what they have done since. The implication
of the poem, which is more evident in the grammar of the German original, extends the impetus
to scrutinise one’s conscience and actions beyond the 1940s to all readers.
‘Refugee Blues’
W. H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the greatest English language poets of the twentieth
century. His strong political commitment – he briefly served in the Spanish Civil War in 1937
– was reflected in many of his poems in the 1930s.
‘Refugee Blues’ was written in New York in March 1939 and addresses the fate of Jewish
refugees from Germany, often through vivid comparisons to the natural world. The poem
particularly highlights the frequent indifference or hostility of the governments and citizens of
the countries in which German Jews sought refuge. In the seventh stanza, Auden makes direct
reference to Hitler’s famous speech of 30th January 1939 which ‘prophesied’ that world war
would lead to “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”. (It is important for students to
understand that this poem was written before the outbreak of war and the start of the
Holocaust.) Although ‘Refugee Blues’ is a rather lengthy poem, its rhythms – the poem was
one of several written by Auden in the late 1930s that drew inspiration from blues music – and
direct language encourage comprehension.
Nobel acceptance speech, 1986
Elie Wiesel (1928- ) was born in Sighet (now Sighetu Marmaţiei in Romania). He was deported
to Auschwitz-Birkenau together with his family and the rest of his community in May 1944
following the German invasion of Hungary. His mother and youngest sister Tzipora were
murdered on arrival in Birkenau; his father died in Buchenwald in January 1945 days after he
and Elie had arrived in the camp following a death march. Elie Wiesel first recounted his
experiences in Un di Velt Hot Geshvign (And the World Remained Silent), a 900-page Yiddish
memoir, which formed the basis for Night (first published in French in 1958) which has become
one of the best-known and most haunting of Auschwitz testimonies.
Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 as a testament to his tireless campaigning
to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and to raise awareness of more recent genocides.
These powerful words are taken from his acceptance speech.
Protest!
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka (1889-1968) was born into a prominent family of Polish artists and
political activists. She became a well-known writer in the interwar period and was allied to
Catholic, nationalist and antisemitic movements. Following the German invasion of Poland,
she became an active member of the underground resistance. Despite her antisemitism,
Kossak-Szczucka was so repelled by the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka
extermination camp in the summer of 1942 that she wrote the leaflet Protest!, of which 5,000
copies were illegally produced.
Kossak-Szczucka did more than condemn the passivity of the world in the face of
unprecedented mass murder; in September 1942, she co-founded the Provisional Committee
to Aid Jews which sought to provide hiding places and support for fugitive Jews. In December
of the same year, the Provisional Committee evolved into Żegota, an arm of the Polish
underground state which helped thousands of Jews in occupied Poland, especially in Warsaw.
Kossak-Szczucka was arrested in 1943 and sent to Auschwitz but subsequently released,
enabling her to participate in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. She escaped to Britain following
the imposition of a Communist regime in 1945 but returned to Poland in 1957 during the
political liberalisation which followed Stalin’s death. She was posthumously honoured as a
Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1985.
‘1980’
Abraham Sutzkever (1913-2010) was born in modern Belarus and grew up in Vilna (then Wilno
in Poland, now Vilnius in Lithuania) where he became a leading member of the Yung Vilné
(Young Vilna) group of Yiddish poets and artists. Following the creation of the Vilna Ghetto in
September 1941, Sutzkever’s poems recorded the realities of ghetto life whilst also urging
Jews to resist. In this poem, written in the titular year, Sutzkever pays tribute to Zofia
Bartoszewicz, a Polish woman who – with her husband Jan – sheltered the poet following his
escape from the Vilna Ghetto in early 1943. (Zofia was known as Yanova, meaning ‘wife of
Jan’.) Zofia also provided medical help for Sutzkever when he fell ill and smuggled food into
the ghetto for his family. After Sutzkever was spotted by a neighbour, he decided to return to
the ghetto to avoid the risk of denunciation which would have led not only to his own death but
also those of Jan and Zofia. Just days before the ghetto’s final destruction in September 1943,
Sutzkever and his wife escaped and joined the Jewish partisan movement in the forests
around Vilna. They settled in Israel after the war.
Sutzkever’s moving declaration of a survivor’s obligation to honour his rescuer reminds us of
the importance of preserving the memory of the courageous minority of individuals who chose
to offer assistance to Jews, often at great personal risk to themselves. The writer was
responsible for Jan and Zofia being awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by Yad
Vashem, marked by the planting of a tree in Jerusalem referred to in the final line of the second
stanza. The reference in the fourth stanza to “crunching the snow / so I’ll know” relates to the
practice of many rescuers of using a special signal so that the person in hiding knew when
they were approaching.
The rescue of the Jews of Denmark
Aage Bertelsen (1901-1980) was an educator who was the head of a school in Lyngby in
eastern Denmark. He played a prominent role in organising perhaps the most spectacular
example of the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust: the successful smuggling of almost all
Danish Jews to the safety of neutral Sweden in October 1943. After Nazi plans to deport the
Jews to the East were leaked, the Danish Resistance hastily improvised hiding places and a
flotilla of fishing boats, rowing boats and even canoes to make the passage. Around 7,200
Jews were thereby ferried to safety along with 680 non-Jewish family members. Fewer than
500 Jews were apprehended by the Nazis. They were deported to the Terezín Ghetto yet all
but 51 survived the war, largely as a result of pressure on the Germans from Danish officials
to ensure that they were well-treated.
Although the comparatively small size of Denmark’s Jewish population perhaps made its
rescue easier than in other countries, it nonetheless relied on the goodwill and activism of
many members of society, such as Aage Bertelsen, who was himself forced to take the same
journey across the Øresund to Sweden in November 1943 to escape the Gestapo. A strong
pacifist, Bertelsen continued to campaign for humanitarian causes after the war.
The last letter of Youra Livchitz
Youra Livchitz (1917-1994) was born into a Jewish family in Kiev. After his parents separated
in 1928, his mother emigrated with her two sons to Belgium, where Youra qualified as a doctor.
He became an active member of the Belgian Resistance following the German invasion of
1940. On 19th April 1943, the same day that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began, Youra and
two non-Jewish friends - armed only with a pistol, a pair of wire cutters, and a lamp covered
in red paper to make it look like a stop signal – succeeded in stopping a train carrying 1,631
Jews from the Mechelen transit camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Their actions helped 231 people
to get off the train of whom 115 successfully escaped. The youngest survivor was an 11-yearold boy.
Youra was subsequently betrayed to the Gestapo and arrested in May 1943. He managed to
escape but was again arrested, with his brother Choura who was also a resistance fighter, in
the following month. Both brothers were executed in February 1944. Youra wrote this last
letter to his mother from his prison cell.
From a manifesto of the Jewish Combat Organisation
The Jewish Combat Organisation (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa or ŻOB) was founded in the
Warsaw Ghetto by members of socialist and Zionist youth groups in the summer of 1942,
during the Great Aktion in which close to a quarter of million Jews were deported from the
ghetto to their deaths at Treblinka. Lacking weapons and military experience, there was little
that the ŻOB could do to stop the deportations at that stage. However, following the cessation
of the Aktion in September, the organisation spent the autumn of 1942 building up its forces
and establishing links with the Polish underground. After skirmishes with the SS during a
small-scale Aktion in January 1943, the ŻOB launched the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising when the
Germans entered the ghetto on 19th April 1943 to begin its final liquidation. Although the ŻOB’s
leaders had no illusions of defeating the occupiers, they kept German forces pinned down for
almost a month in the first major civilian revolt anywhere in Nazi-occupied Europe. Most of the
fighters died during the course of the uprising.
This manifesto, issued in the first week of the uprising, was addressed to Poles beyond the
ghetto walls, and by implication to the wider world. The phrase “for your freedom and ours”
would have been familiar to any Pole, having been adopted in the nineteenth century by Polish
insurrectionists to highlight the commonality of Poland’s struggles for independence and those
of other oppressed nations. The extent to which the Polish underground offered – and was
able to offer – an appropriate response to the ŻOB’s struggle has remained a source of debate
since 1943. Nonetheless, the manifesto stands as a testament to the idealism and sacrifice
of the young people who chose to fight for their dignity against almost unimaginable odds.
The last testament of David Graber
David Graber (1923-1942/3) was one of three socialist Zionist activists entrusted with the
burial of the Oneg Shabbat archive during the mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to
Treblinka in the summer of 1942. Oneg Shabbat was a project initiated by the historian
Emanuel Ringelblum which sought to record Jewish life in occupied Warsaw through the
collection of thousands of items including diaries, letters, official papers, statistical
questionnaires and even apparently mundane objects such as sweet wrappers. The aim was
to compile materials which could form the basis of post-war histories which Ringelblum and
others intended to write. When it became clear that Warsaw’s Jews would not survive, the
archive took on a different dimension, as a memorial to the agony of the ghetto. Graber and
his colleagues buried the first cache of materials in metal boxes in the grounds of a former
school in the ghetto. He died at some point between the writing of this document on 3rd August
1942 and the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in May 1943.
This powerful extract from Graber’s final note, buried with the archive, stands as a memorial
to the courage and commitment of the men who buried the archives and to the importance of
Oneg Shabbat itself. His wishes were at least partially fulfilled with the discovery of two of the
three caches after the war (only charred pages from a diary were found from the third
collection). The archive, now housed in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, has become
the most important source for the study of Jewish life during the Holocaust. The reading also
invites students to consider the how the recording of Nazi crimes and preservation of Jewish
culture can be seen as an act of resistance.
‘Monument’
Władysław Szlengel (1914-1943) was a leading Polish Jewish poet who, rather unusually,
wrote in Polish rather than Yiddish. When the war broke out, Szlengel was working in a theatre
in Białystok (a city which was occupied by the Soviets in September 1939) but, concerned by
the fate of his wife who had remained Warsaw, he chose to return to the Polish capital in 1940.
Following the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto in November 1940, Szlengel became one its
leading cultural activists. His poems, which recorded the struggles of daily life in the ghetto,
were written for a public audience and were widely performed or passed on by word of mouth.
He and his wife were killed during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943.
This reading consists of the first stanzas of Szlengel’s poem ‘Monument’, which was written
following the deportation of close to quarter of a million Jews from the ghetto to Treblinka in
less than two months in the late summer of 1942. The poem’s contrast of the honours
bestowed on fallen ‘heroes’ and the overlooked fate of an apparently unremarkable Jewish
mother serves to encourage us to remember the humanity of those millions of ‘ordinary’ people
who fell victim to the Holocaust.
‘Toys’
This second poem by Abraham Sutzkever, written in Israel in 1956, is a moving elegy to the
child victims of the Holocaust. In urging his young daughter, born after the war, to cherish her
playthings, Sutzkever evokes the memory of the children of the Vilna Ghetto in the devastating
final stanza. (The phrase “all seven streets / Of the city” is a direct reference to the ghetto,
which was concentrated in a small area of Vilna’s historic Jewish quarter.) It is given added
poignancy with the knowledge that Sutzkever’s own newborn son was murdered by the Nazis
in 1942.
‘The Jewish Shtetl’
This simple but affecting poem, written by an unknown author, reminds us that the Holocaust
represented the destruction of communities and cultures which had existed for centuries as
well as of individuals and families. ‘Shtetl’ is a Yiddish word, typically used to denote a small
town with a majority Jewish population in eastern Europe. Such communities existed across
Poland, Lithuania and the Soviet Union in the pre-war era; all were destroyed in the Holocaust.
‘Shema’
Primo Levi (1919-1987) was a Jewish chemist from Turin. After an ill-fated attempt to establish
a partisan group, Levi and a group of friends were arrested in late 1943. When he revealed
his Jewish identity, believing that this would save him from execution as a partisan, Levi was
sent to the Fossoli di Carpi transit camp and from there, in February 1944, to Auschwitz. Levi
was selected to work in Auschwitz III (Monowitz), the large camp attached to IG Farben’s Buna
chemical factory, where he remained until liberation in January 1945; ironically, he was saved
by a bout of scarlet fever which meant that he was left behind when the SS evacuated the
camp thereby sparing him the horrors of the death marches. In 1947, he published If This Is a
Man, perhaps the best-known and most powerful Auschwitz memoir. The Holocaust continued
to haunt much of Levi’s literary output in the following decades and contributed to the periodic
bouts of depression which he suffered until his death (officially ruled as suicide) in 1987.
‘Shema’ was first published as the introduction to If This Is a Man. The Shema is a Jewish
prayer declaring the singularity of God which is the centrepiece of prayer services. Levi, a
lifelong atheist, adapts elements of the prayer to instead invite us to consider the humanity of
the victims of Auschwitz and to remind us of the importance of memory.