Making Beauty Out of Sadness
Poetry is an amazing art that can transform emotions, even negative ones, into things of pure beauty. Poems express the best and worst of humanity and show them in a beautiful way. Many poets express their feelings, desires and fears alike, through poetry. Many horrible things have transformed the human race. Poetry can show the transformation rather than the immediate event. The Holocaust was truly horrible, and it transformed the human race. Many people have written poems about the Holocaust;0 they show the horrible sights and the beauty of change it brought to the human race.
Many people have written poetry about the Holocaust, but the most touching are poems written by survivors. Linda Vastan wrote the poem A Name in which she explores the connection between humans and their names. Names are what humans always have, and they never leave them. When a person dies, his or her name survives long after even the remains have gone. Names shape us and nicknames do too. Essentially, each person is the sum of their names. Names are the human race’s identification tags and the only real way of differentiating one person from another. “If I had taken that name, who would I be now?” She is asking if accepting names changes who one is.
Irena Klapfist dedicates her first poem to those who died. “...because someone was late, because someone did not arrive at all, because someone told them to wait and they just couldn’t any longer...” Small twists of fate were all that killed these people. Some claim that these poor people died for a higher cause. But what kind of higher cause would cause this. Fate alone killed millions in the Holocaust. This is immediately apparent in this poem. The poem then moves on to the fact that the dead did not deserve death but they may be the lucky ones. They do not have to deal with the aftermath, the sorrow, the broken pieces of the world that survivors are left holding. “These words are dedicated to those who died, because death is a punishment, because death is a reward. Because death is the final rest, because death is eternal rage.” The dead may, in this instance, be better off.
Irena Klapfist’s second poem is dedicated to those who survived. “...because they turned the other cheek, because they looked the other way...” The survivors are people0who hid rather than stand up for their beliefs. There were p0eople that ran when others held their ground. Those0who ran, who hid, who raged in the dark and never said a word. Those who left their friends, their family because they were afraid. But they were smart, smart because they knew when to stay silent and when to speak, w0hen to run and when to hide. They knew when to stand up straight and look the enemy in the eye as its peer, its equal and when to disappear quietly, silently and without a trace. “These words are dedicated to those who survived, because life is a wilderness and they were savage, because life is an awakening and they were alert, because life is a flower and they blossomed, because life is a struggle and they struggled, because life is a gift and they were free to accept it.”
The Holocaust has destroyed so much, but it has created some beauty, somewhere. It has opened an avenue to pent-up thoughts and long-dead hopes. The Holocaust has shaped humanity and through all the struggle, humans have become better for it.