Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945

Summary

THE POEMS ASSEMBLED IN THIS SECTION deal with themes generally having to do with the realities of concentration camp life, though this is, of course, a rather imprecise characterization. Indeed, it may not always be an entirely satisfactory way of systemizing a wealth of diverse and uniquely personal statements by individual authors. Nevertheless, the attempt undertaken in this anthology to arrange the material chronologically and thematically into four different sections makes it possible to look at various aspects of life in the concentration camp at Dachau. Each section presents one particular aspect of “concentration camp poetry,” presenting via the variety of individual writings a vivid overview of the complexity of the extreme universe of concentration camp experiences.

There is a vast amount of writing on the realities of concentration camp life, and certainly there is a great deal still to write. Yet who else would be better able to summarize the basic facts here than a survivor of multiple camps:

Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau, clearly formulates the most overwhelming impression concentration camp conditions left behind: Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp.

Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Israel on his lips.