In Marked, Stephen Herz's poems of the Holocaust, we see through a prism of linked poems the unfolding horror, terror, and despair of this dehumanizing bloody time of cruelty, evil, and death. Here are poems infused with the Third Reich's virulent anti-Semitic slogans, proclamations, and hate-filled speeches calling for the death of the enemy—the Jews. Here is the Yellow Star, marking all Jews for the round-ups, the ghettos, the mass-shootings, and the death trains. From the burning of the books to the burning of the bodies, here is history distilled. One can hear the voices of the bystanders wishing the Jews "good riddance." Voices of Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads. Voices from the Sonderkommandos in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Voices crying out for help from an indifferent America, an indifferent world. And, here are the shots shots shots echoing through the poems, echoing through time. Today, some seventy years after the Holocaust, we still can't understand. But, the author hopes this collection of Holocaust poems will help us to remember, help us to keep the Holocaust alive, to keep it from falling into mythology. |
