64 results
Mirco Giuseppe Camia, Italy
- from Part III - Liberation: Dachau, April 29, 1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 194-199
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Summary
Libertà a Dachau
Il sole
stà ridando senso alla vita
alla Libertà che è giunta
Oggi 29 aprile
pattuglie
uomini armati
sono entrati dal cancello
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
Gli orridi guardiani
sparuti gruppi sulle torrette
tremanti di fronte all'evento
neanche han saputo ideare
ultimo baluardo per loro
l'arma di costrizione
crudo cemento
eretto sopra il capo degli schiavi
Mitraglieri inoperanti
le dita dapprima irrigidite
ricolmi di orrore
han visto dalle baracche
sortire larve esitanti
Poi quando quelli son scesi
qualche mano
rattrappita sui congegni di fuoco
non ha avuto pietà
Ora giacciono
cose lerci
la boria svanita
grigi stracci
truci farfalle
da un ciclo inverso
ridotte a crisalidi immonde
Altri si addossano al muro
le mani tremanti alla nuca
Io giaccio
gli occhi rivolti ad un cielo
che ora posso vedere
Freedom at Dachau
The sun
restores a meaning to life
to the Freedom which has arrived
Today 29th April
patrols
armed men
entered through the gate
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
The dreaded guards
paltry groups on the turrets
trembling in the face of the event
were not even able to create
a last bastion for them
the weapon of coercion
stark cement
erected over the slaves’ heads
Inoperative machine gunners
their fingers initially frozen
overwhelmed with horror
saw hesitant maggots
coming out from the barracks
Then when they have gone down
a few hands
stiff around the firing machines
had no mercy
Now filthy things lie
pride vanished
grey rags
grim butterflies
by a reverse cycle
have been reduced to dirty chrysalises
Others pin themselves to the wall
their hands trembling at the nape
I lie
my eyes turned to a sky
that I can now see
I gerani alla finestra
incredibili fiori
su un davanzale inaudito
si aprono
su un volto negro piangente
le gote stirate
gli occhi sbarrati
le labbra contratte
incredula maschera
mirante gli orrori che giacciono
ai quali appartengo
Scompare
Ed ecco
la stella di David sul petto
giallo triangolo
triste discriminazione fra cose subumane
appare
Riso di teschio
sguardo folle che guata qualcosa che regge
quasi un peso cullato a fatica
cosa orrenda che abbraccia
possesso inconsulto
Una giaccia zebrata
lorda di sangue
lacerata da un corpo che giace
sullo impiantito all'ingresso del blocco
La Giustizia ha volti scarniti
occhi infossati
casacca a righe […]
Tadeusz Borowski, Poland, biography
- from Part III - Liberation: Dachau, April 29, 1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 219-221
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Tadeusz Borowski was born in 1922 in Zhytomyr, Ukraine. Beginning in 1933 Borowski lived in Poland, working as a builder and studying Polish philology at the underground University of Warsaw. He became later active as a prose writer, journalist, and poet. He was arrested in February 1943 and deported to Auschwitz soon after. Borowski was brought to Natzweiler- Daumergen concentration camp in August 1944, and later was taken to Allach, an external camp of Dachau. After his liberation in April 1945 he was brought to the displaced persons camp at Freimann, near Munich. There he met his fellow sufferer and writer, Stanisław Wygodzki (see pp. 178–79), to whom he dedicated the poem “Do ***” (To ***; pp. 220–21).
Borowski's poetry collection Namen der Strömung was published in Munich in 1945, and Bei uns in Auschwitz, an account written in cooperation with two fellow prisoners, followed in 1946. He returned to Poland in June 1946, working as an editor in Warsaw.
In 1949–50 he was a correspondent in Berlin. In 1951, not yet twenty-nine years old, he committed suicide in Warsaw. Borowski left behind an extensive body of poetry and prose, Utwory Zebrane (Collected Works, 1954), which is the source for most of the poems excerpted here. In a letter to his former fellow student, Zofia Świdwińska, dated October 6, 1945, he describes the conditions in which he was transported to Dachau concentration camp, how he escaped execution twice, and what he did to survive after liberation:
But I didn't get to Munich by the most direct route. I arrived via a number of camps, sometimes on foot, sometimes in open cattle trucks, without sleeping much and without eating at all. You probably can't even imagine how long a person can last without food. As for Dachau, I came there from near Stuttgart, in a sick convoy destined, by common consensus—ours as well as that of those left behind—for the gas chambers. We were not gassed. On the day of liberation, they wanted to shoot us down to the last one, but the Americans arrived a few hours too soon. We were not shot. I then nursed myself back to health thanks to my own initiative: I copied poems for a secret graphomaniac—it was one of the worst jobs I have done in my life—and this allowed me to get enough to eat….
Léon Boutbien, France, biography
- from Part III - Liberation: Dachau, April 29, 1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 205-211
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Léon Boutbien was born in 1915 in Paris. He became a doctor of medicine; he was arrested in 1943 and in July deported to Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner. He was later evacuated from Erzingen, an external camp of Natzweiler-Struthof, to Allach, an external camp of Dachau, in a brutal forced march in April 1945. Here, Boutbien worked as a doctor until his liberation, as is also clear from the poem reproduced here, which was first printed in a brochure titled “Natzweiler Struthof.” After his liberation Boutbien published several books and, as a socialist, was involved for a time in French politics. He died in Lanloup, France, in 2001.
Léon Boutbien's poem refers toward the end to a very specific incident that occurred the day Dachau concentration camp was liberated, April 29, 1945. The incident is described in another source in the following way: “American shells, which were targeted at German anti-aircraft fire, hit the periphery of the Allach camp and the Jewish camp, wounding and killing some of the prisoners, who were waiting for their liberation. A Jewish doctor who was standing next to Dr. Boutbien during an operation met a tragic end in this way….”
Poème
Nous avons pas à pas descendu les gradins
La plaine est devant nous
Courbés sous notre fardeau
Le ventre creux
l'oeil hagard
le geste tremblant
Nous avons retourné la tête
Une tête vieillie
blanchie
usée
Le champ est couvert de grands nénuphars
de terre ocre et sale
éclaboussée de boue
les bombes
Le canon tonne au loin
la sirène épouvante
Si la mort est là, pour nous maintenant
qu'importe!
La montagne est loin
elle fuit, elle a dépouillé son habit
tué son chien
jeté son sac et son fusil
elle fuit comme un homme
qui a peur
tout simplement
La montagne est derrière nous
je l'aperçois au loin
elle reste toujours neigeuse
insensible
étrange.
Serait-ce ça la montagne!
Le train roule! J'ai froid
je frissonne
j'ai peur
L'air vibre, l'avion passe
il passe
Le train roule! Où allons-nous
je m'inquiète
dans un coin râle
un mort.
Rupko Godec, Slovenia, biography
- from Part IV - The Years after 1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 227-229
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Rupko Godec was born in 1925 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Godec was initially interned in Perugia and then afterwards deported to Dachau on October 11, 1943 (prisoner number 56,271). Here he became co-editor of the Dachau camp paper “Dawn,” secretly conceived for the Slovenian youth. This paper, in spite of all dangers connected with publishing it, appeared twice.
The following poem was written in 1946 and finally finished on October 18, 1947, and is dedicated to the fellow prisoners who tragically perished in Dachau. The typewritten original manuscript is still in the possession of the author.
Krik v noči
Krik brezizrazen
zažrl se v prostor je prazen
in zdramil me sredi je spanja.
Tovariš kraj mene se vzpel je v vročici.
Kakor da sanja
strašne stvari,
so njegove oči
zastrmele se v mene.
S strahom sem gledal njegove oči,
ki tako brez moči
so v mene strmele.
Vse dolge noči
so suhe njegove oči:
v njih solz več ni.
V mene strmela so lica upadla
in suhe kosti,
prekrite s prosojno le kožo.
Vse dolge noči
so suhe njegove kosti:
življenja v njih ni.
Tedaj je iztegnil roko v temino
in hripav je glas napolnil praznino:
“Ne v krematorij!
Ne … ne …
Joj,
v glavi mi žge
prokleti ta plamen.
Pustite me!
Nisem žival ne kamen,
človek sem, kakor ste vi …”
Zamrle so v ustih besede
in ugasnile motne oči.
In zopet bo jutri eden sežgan,
po njivah pepel bo njegov razmetan.
Tako je šlo iz dneva v dan
in ljudi bilo je še mnogo.
Pomislil sem
in vztrepetalo je moje srce:
Kdaj pride vrsta na me?
A Scream at Night
An expressionless scream
cuts into the empty space
and jolts me awake.
My bunkmate sits up in a fever.
As though he were dreaming
horrible things,
his eyes fix on me.
Frightened, I look at his eyes
as they stare at me
powerlessly.
Night after long night
his eyes remain dry:
they have no more tears.
The sunken cheeks,
the matchstick limbs,
translucent skin stretched taut.
Night after long night
these matchstick limbs:
there is no life in them.
László Salamon, Romania (Hungarian mother tongue), biography
- from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 93-96
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László Salamon was born in 1891 in Oradea, Romania. He began writing his first poems in his mother tongue, Hungarian, while he was a grammar school pupil. He was seriously injured in the First World War, where he served as an officer. After the war, during the time of the declaration of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, among other independent socialist or anarchist republics (or soviets) across parts of central and eastern Europe, he worked closely alongside the philosopher György Lukács as a professor of Hungarian, Latin, and philosophy and was sentenced to four years imprisonment by the Court of the Counterrevolution. After his release, he was the founder of several socialist journals, such as Auróra and A Másik Ut. He also worked as editor of the culture section of the journal Új Kelet until it was banned in 1940, as well as on numerous Hungarian and foreign journals. Over twenty volumes of his poems and essays have appeared in Hungarian.
His wife, Ella Salamon, tells of his detention and deportation: “When the Gestapo came to Cluj-Napoca … he was immediately arrested and taken to prison. Then he was taken to the ghetto and from there deported to Auschwitz, and later to other concentration camps including Dachau and its external camp of Kaufering near Landsberg, where he created some of his poems. It's worth mentioning that the Gestapo only learnt after his deportation that he was the author and publisher of a 1933 satirical epic about Adolf Hitler. The Gestapo then tried in vain to reach the train, but it had already left….”
In spite of the most adverse circumstances, Salamon witnessed the liberation of Dachau from the external camp of Allach and then returned to his homeland.
His wife offered the following explication of his poems, which she presented for this collection: “The bitter tone of many of his poems, which he wrote in Kaufering, is explained by the fact that he had been told that his loved ones—including his wife—had been killed….”
Fortunately, on his return he found his spouse, whom he had presumed dead, alive. He lived with her and their daughter in Cluj-Napoca until his death in 1983.
Bibliography
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 273-278
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Karel Parcer, Slovenia, biography
- from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 19-24
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Karel Parcer was born in 1906 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. On May 8, 1944, he was deported to Dachau as prisoner number 67,808, and was still a prisoner in the camp when it was liberated in 1945. Before his deportation he worked as a bank consultant. The following text has its origins in 1944 and was written in the camp. It is the second part of a longer poetic work entitled “Dachau,” which begins with the motif of Hell from Dante's Divine Comedy. The author gave the typewritten manuscript to the Museum of the People's Revolution (now the National Museum of Contemporary History) in Slovenia, where it is stored in the “Dachau” file.
Ob vstopu v taborišče smrti
Nedelja je bila, ko smo vstopili
v ta tabor smrti s težkimi koraki
kot v težkem snu Matjaževi vojščaki,
potem ko smo prostosti sled zgubili.
Zdaj dvignil sem pogled, glej čredo gosto,
neskončno množico na levi strani:
izstradani, zbledeli, razcapani
so se trpini zbirali v sprejem na prosto!
Glej, da bi dih svoj in pa čas zaustavil,
da v en mah bi preštel te ljudske trope
ter vase vse sprejel poglede tope
iz vrst tega špalirja—kaj bi stavil!
Bili so vsi enaki, smrtnobledi,
vsi v progastih oblekah modro-belih,
vsak v rokah držal je trpljenja kelih
in vprašujoči b'li so njih pogledi.
Kaj vprašate nas le, oči neštete?
Da li prišli smo iz svobode,
da li naj to poslednja četa bode,
ki k vam prišla je iz prostosti svete?
Zdaj ugledal v njih očeh sem soj solzeni:
mi zanje smo še ravnokar živeli
v svetu, ki za njim so koprneli
že mesece in leta v sužnji temi.
In v vrvenje množic je posvetil
odsev iz naših vrst, spomin na domovino,
ki tisto jutro še vso sinjino
nam je blestela, ko je zor zasvetil.
Še dih njen blagoslovljen nas je obdajal,
na čevljih še domače grude sledi
in njena še toplota v naši sredi!
Ves ta privid je množico naslajal.
Kaj je narodov stalo tu pred nami?!
Zdaj v eno vse so misli se strnile:
v spominu svetle domovine mile
vsi so jeziki eno govorili z nami.
On Entering the Death Camp
It was Sunday when we entered
this death camp, with steps as heavy
as the dreams of King Matjaž's warriors,
having lost our trace of freedom.
Mirco Giuseppe Camia, Italy
- from Part IV - The Years after 1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 230-233
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OMBRE
e il passo inconcreto
è lordo di pene e fatica
Duri zoccoli
avvolgono piaghe profonde
dove il pidocchio pullula
annidato in pezze da piede
OMBRE
goffe figure
allineate da fauci di cani
da urla feroci
Cose ambulanti sull'acciottolato
sopra il fragore di suole legnose
Di lato i gendarmi
sinistra … due … tre … quattro …
cadenzano il passo
che suoni ritmato
lento valzer di morte
OMBRE
aleggia su esse
fantasma luttuoso di gelo
fatto sostanza
LINKS … ZWEI … DREI … VIER …
compagna di danza
oscena puttana avvinghiata
falangi ghiacciate
sfioranti le nuche rapate
LA MORTE
1946SHADOWS
and the impalpable footstep
is heavy with pity and exhaustion
Hard clogs
envelop deep wounds
where the louse roams
nestled in foot rags
SHADOWS
awkward figures
lined up by dog jaws
by savage screams
Objects wandering on the cobblestones
over the clunking of wooden soles
Close by the guards
left … two … three … four
they march in time
to a rhythm
slow waltz of death
SHADOWS
hovering over them
a mournful ghost of frost
made real
LINKS … ZWEI … DREI … VIER …
dance partner
filthy whore clinging
frozen fingers
brushing against shaven napes
DEATH
1946—Translated by Louise HeritageL'esecuzione
Il sangue,
già s'intuisce d'attorno.
O meglio, uomo,
lo senti.
Ritorno all'antico:
oltre gli occhi
la mente si disfa
di tutto.
Dietro,
c’è un muro qualunque;
contro il muro una vita:
più non sarà tra poco.
L'attimo ora
è il suo valore.
Le spalle attendono,
come un imprevisto che non è:
e viene
e in un attimo solo,
quasi impaurita dall'urlo multiplo dei fuochi,
la vita trasvola.
Rimane una spoglia distesa.
Uomo, era il tuo mondo.
1946
Part IV - The Years after 1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 15 June 2014, pp 225-226
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THE YEARS AFTER LIBERATION brought no respite: to this day, the survivors of Dachau, like those of the other concentration camps, continue to be traumatized by their extreme experiences. This trauma became a noticeable feature of survivors’ daily lives, but it also surfaced in their poetry written years or even decades afterwards. Even now, many of the survivors suffer from nightmares, and almost all are racked by feelings of guilt toward those who lost their lives in the concentration camps. A not insignificant number—including Sylvain Gutmacker, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, and Bruno Bettelheim, who was also imprisoned in Dachau until 1938—were no longer able to bear this trauma and committed suicide, often years or decades afterwards.
Edmond Michelet described his experience of Dachau and its consequences:
The experience we survived is indelible. It has marked us for the rest of our lives. It has left us with scars, not all of which are visible. Neither healthy nor whole—which is such an oppressive word! This is the truth and it is something I wish to say again. We have plumbed the very depths—our own and other people's. A certain open-hearted trust remains denied to us forever. On the other hand, the word resists my use of it. It would be wrong to consider us all jaded cynics, even if our apparent indifference sometimes astounds those who do not know where we have come from, who do not know, as we do, that arresting feeling of having second helpings of life. The return of spring becomes, from now on, something inexpressible. Every year, we congratulate each other spontaneously on the anniversary of liberation. This is how we celebrate our second entry into the world of the living, our rebirth.
Everybody who has been imprisoned in a concentration camp has the right to draw the conclusions he or she sees fit from it. These conclusions are determined just as much by the particular circumstances of an individual experience as by the nature of the person who experienced it.
Feliks Rak, Poland, biography
- from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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Feliks Rak was born in 1903 in Borowiecz, Poland. Rak was arrested by the Gestapo in the spring of 1940 and initially imprisoned in Kielce. In July 1940 he was deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then was moved to Dachau on September 5 of the same year, where he was registered as prisoner number 18,425. He was still interned in Dachau at its liberation in April 1945. Rak was a leading member of a secret organization in the camp. Many of the poems that he wrote during his incarceration in the concentration camps were read there at secret gatherings. Following liberation he compiled his memoirs and published them together with other material. Feliks Rak died in 1992.
Dachau wśród słońca
Poznałem piekło Dachau wśród słońca
Obóz, baraki stojące tu w rząd.
Płot murowany, rów, zasieki z drutu,
Jest w nim podłączony zabójczy prąd.
Wysokie wieże, a na nich esesmani
Pilnują w nocy, pilnują też w dzień.
Broń maszynowa zawszwe w pogotowiu,
Więźniowie głodni tu chodzą jak cień.
I krematorium tu co dzień i w nocy
Dymi bez przerwy i zatruwa życie.
Słychać też strzały, gdzieś w pobliżu, w lesie
rozstrzeliwują więźniów już o świcie.
Słupek, “kobyła” łańcuch, szubienica,
Jest to codzienny ich sprzęt do użytku.
łańcuch na rękę, hak, już więzień wisi.
Radość esesmanów. Pies! I to już wszystko.
Co dzień nas budzą nie poranne zorze,
Lecz judaszowska ręka esesmana.
Koncentracyjny obóz tu poznałem.
Do dziś w historii to rzecz nieznana.
Dachau 1941
Dachau beneath the Sun
Beneath the sun I discovered Dachau—
the camp with its barracks laid out in rows,
its brick walls, ditch, and barbed wire
plugged in to a deadly current.
The high towers where SS-guards
keep watch all day and night—
their machine guns at the ready;
the starving prisoners like shadows.
All day and night smoke
from the crematorium poisons lives;
while, close by, you hear the prisoners
being shot at dawn in the forest.
A post, a mare, chains, a gallows—
these are the props they use.
His hands chained, the guards rejoice
when the first captive hangs like a dog.
Dedication
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 15 June 2014, pp vii-vii
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Mirco Giuseppe Camia, Italy, biography
- from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- My Shadow in Dachau
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- 15 June 2014, pp 56-66
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Mirco Giuseppe Camia was born in 1925 in Milan, Italy. While a student of classical languages, Camia was arrested for membership in a resistance group. He was sent to a prison in Milan, transferred from there to a camp near Bolzano, and then deported to Flossenbürg concentration camp. On October 10, 1944 he was transferred to Dachau and registered as prisoner number 116,354. Camia was then transferred to the external camp of Dachau, Kempten-Kottern, and finally liberated from Dachau on April 29, 1945. He returned to Italy in June 1945, still seriously ill. Following his recovery, Camia completed his studies. He settled near Milan and died there in 1997.
In the 1980s, Camia returned to Dachau for the first time and the past confronted him anew. In 1989, he spoke about this experience: “My return to Flossenbürg and Dachau was one of the most significant experiences of my life: victory in the war I waged against myself for many years; meeting people, friends, who had driven out the spirits who dwelt there, who existed, in such a confusing way, where death has its dominion….”
On his return to Dachau for the fortieth anniversary of liberation in 1985, the poems Camia had brought with him provided the inspiration for this anthology. These were his own poetry and the sole poem of a former fellow prisoner, the seventeen-year-old Nevio Vitelli. Speaking about the young Vitelli's poem, which he had preserved for almost forty years, Mirco Giuseppe Camia said: “The discovery of this poem was undoubtedly one of the most significant experiences, or rather the most significant experience of my life, an experience of the kind that leads one to steer his future on a better course. Nevio enabled me to rediscover myself in his unknown poem ‘My Shadow in Dachau’” (see pp. 175, 177).
Mirco Giuseppe Camia, who was already writing poetry before his deportation, recounted that he never had any opportunity during his incarceration to put his thoughts into writing. He recalls his personal experience of that time: “I knew only one prisoner in the camp who was actually able to use a pen: the block clerk, who registered new arrivals and deleted the names of the dead….” Nevertheless, these are precisely the thoughts and emotions, the impressions of that time, that recur in Camia's poetry, written during various spells in hospital after his liberation.
Arthur Haulot, Belgium
- from Part IV - The Years after 1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- Book:
- My Shadow in Dachau
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 248-249
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Summary
Exorcisme
Pardonnez-moi si ma langue a perdu la forme des promesses.
A trop manger de sel le sol même se corrompt.
Ivrogne imbibé de vins amers
j'ai besoin de la haute complicité des tiges pour subsister.
Ne croyez pas que je caresse mes délires:
je les voudrais naïfs comme ce cou d'enfant.
Mais les marées délivrent trois fois par existence
des boues qui font fermer les yeux aux plus rudes marins.
Il y a certains jours des taches immobiles sur mes fonds de soleil.
Nulle brûlure, nul cri, nul feu, nulle colère, nul refus
ne les peuvent effacer.
L'exorcisme d'aimer ne suffit pas à imposer silence
au fantôme affolé de la peur de la mort.
Peur de la mort? Blasphème.
N'as-tu, dans les os des poignets, dans la torsion du cou,
dans le défi des reins, la vérité qui fut ton Père?
Et cet enfant aux yeux de fleurs
n'est-il là pour porter ton propre témoignage?
C'est la jubilation de Dieu qui lève ses tempêtes dans son cri,
dans son pas.
Rien ne peut plus mourir.
Passager, tu te fais passage.
Le gué s'enchante de ses eaux.
1976Exorcism
Forgive me if my tongue no longer utters the language of promises.
By absorbing salt the soil itself is poisoned.
A drunkard soaked in bitter wine,
I need the complicity of green shoots to grow.
Do not imagine I indulge my ravings:
I would have them innocent as the neck of a child.
But the tides deliver three times more
Because of the mud that closes the eyes
Of even the toughest sailors.
On certain days an intractable darkness
Obscures my stock of sunlight.
No burning, no cry, no fire, no anger,
no refusal can efface it.
The exorcism of loving has no power to impose its silence
on a phantom crazed by its fear of death.
Fear of death? Blasphemy!
Do you not have in the bones of your wrist, in the twist of your neck,
or in the resistance of your loins, the truth of the Father?
This child whose eyes are flowers
will he not also be a witness for you?
It's God's jubilation that raises the storm
in his cry and in his steps.
Nothing can die any more.
Like a bird of passage you are passing through.
The ford rejoices in its waters.
1976—Translated by David Cooke
Introduction
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- By Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
-
- Book:
- My Shadow in Dachau
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 March 2018
- Print publication:
- 15 June 2014, pp 1-16
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Summary
The Poetry of the Concentration Camp: An Encounter with Individual Fate
IN TIMES OF SUFFERING, poetry is like a song that liberates and penetrates right to the very bottom of the truth….” This characterization of poetry, written in the extreme conditions of the camp experience, came from the pen of the French journalist and survivor of Dachau concentration camp, Fabien Lacombe.
His testimony touches all that is fundamental to the poems presented here, written by people of different nationalities, whose fates were shaped by their experiences of Dachau concentration camp.
Between 1933 and 1945, over 200,000 people were forced to spend a part of their lifetime in this concentration camp; there were people from twenty-seven different nations with many different mother tongues.
Over 30,000 deaths were registered in the concentration camp of Dachau (p. 269), but there were also an unknown number of unaccounted deaths, for example, during evacuation transports and death marches; by so-called “special treatments.”
Just how many individual fates lie behind these numbers is hard to grasp. Might the poems here perhaps present to us such individual fates and tell us more about what happened than facts and figures?
In the poems that follow, we may discover many of the thoughts, wishes and hopes of all those who did not survive the inferno; but numerous poems that were written by survivors in the years after their liberation continued to be dedicated to their experiences in the camps. Although it was forbidden for prisoners to keep personal records during their time in the concentration camp, diaries, reports, and poems were written in secret. Many of them remained in private hands before being published decades later, including some of the poems in this anthology.
This collection of poems allows thirty-two authors from fourteen different nations, all of whom were imprisoned at Dachau, to have their say. The poems, written in ten different languages, were conceived by the authors either during the time of their imprisonment in Dachau or in the years following their liberation.
In 1985, Mirco Giuseppe Camia, a former Italian deportee, handed over to me, together with his own poetry, the single poem of a seventeen-year- old fellow prisoner. Because it carried for him a deep significance and importance, Mirco Camia had preserved this text for over forty years.
Frontmatter
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- Book:
- My Shadow in Dachau
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp i-vi
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Nevio Vitelli, Italy, biography
- from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- Book:
- My Shadow in Dachau
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 172-177
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Summary
Nevio Vitelli was born in 1928 in Fiume, then Italy. In April 1944, at age 16, Vitelli arrived alone in Germany, and in September of the same year attempted a risky journey to return home to his parents. It was during this attempt that he was arrested by the Gestapo and, owing to the antifascist propaganda he was carrying with him, sent on September 27, 1944, to Dachau (prisoner number 111,785). He lived to see the liberation of the camp in April 1945, returned home in spite of illness resulting from his imprisonment, and died in 1948, after almost continuous hospitalization, at barely twenty years old.
In his short life, Nevio Vitelli wrote only this single poem, “My Shadow in Dachau,” in a hospital in the town of Dachau, which he was taken to after the liberation. In 1989 Mirco Giuseppe Camia (biography, pp. 56–57) recalled his encounter with Nevio Vitelli in that hospital:
I became acquainted with Nevio in the hospital at Dachau, where we shared the same room, together with others, for no more than twenty days…—Twenty days that were so important for me, like an entire lifetime… We didn't speak of much during this time, the most important things of suffering, nothing more…. Anyway, nothing about our future: Where was this future?
We were both badly wounded inside …
He with his seventeen years, even more than me: behind us the knowledge of things that we wanted to repress, but couldn't, just like we couldn't prevent them. There were all the terrible memories with all the open wounds of the soul, which no one could heal. Wounds that were deeper than the ones that afflicted our bodies…. Human being … is this the human being?…
During our stay in the hospital, he never talked to me about his poem. I first heard about it three years later, printed in his obituary, which his parents sent to me when they wrote to inform me about his death….”
Part III - Liberation: Dachau, April 29, 1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- Book:
- My Shadow in Dachau
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 189-190
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AS THE EXPERIENCE OF LIBERATION was confined to a brief space of time, the number of poems in this section is comparatively small. Yet these poems offer a crucial perspective for understanding the inner experience of those who survived to see liberation, affording occasional glimpses of how hard, after all the prisoners had gone through, a return to the world outside would be.
According to the last roll-call there were 32,335 prisoners remaining in Dachau on April 29, 1945.
Viktor Frankl described the experience of liberation from his personal perspective:
In describing the experiences of liberation, which naturally must be personal, we shall pick up the threads of that part of our narrative which told of the morning when the white flag was hoisted above the camp gates after days of high tension. This state of inner suspense was followed by total relaxation. But it would be quite wrong to think that we went mad with joy. What, then, did happen?
[…]
With tired legs we prisoners dragged ourselves to the camp gates.
[…]
“Freedom”—we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it. We had said this word so often during all the years we dreamed about it, that it has lost its meaning. Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours.
[…]
Many days passed, until not only the tongue was loosened, but something within oneself as well; then feeling suddenly broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it.
[…]
Step for step, I progressed, until I again became a human being.
My Shadow in Dachau
- Poems by Victims and Survivors of the Concentration Camp
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Stuart Taberner
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- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 March 2018
- Print publication:
- 15 June 2014
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The concentration camp at Dachau was the first established by the Nazis, opened shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933. It first held political prisoners, but later also forced laborers, Soviet POWs, Jews, and other "undesirables." More than 30,000 deaths were documented there, with many more unrecorded. In the midst of the horror, some inmates turned to poetry to provide comfort, to preserve their sense of humanity, or to document their experiences. Some were or would later become established poets; others were prominent politicians or theologians; still others were ordinary men and women. This anthology contains 68 poems by 32 inmates of Dachau, in 10 different original languages and facing-page English translation, along with short biographies. A prologue by Walter Jens and an introduction by Dorothea Heiser from the original German edition are joined here by a foreword by Stuart Taberner of the University of Leeds. All the poems, having arisen in the experience or memory of extreme human suffering, are testimonies to the persistence of the humanity and creativity of the individual. They are also a warning not to forget the darkest chapter of history and a challenge to the future not to allow it to be repeated. Dorothea Heiser holds an MA from the University of Freiburg. Stuart Taberner is Professor of Contemporary German Literature, Culture, and Society at the University of Leeds.
László Salamon, Romania (Hungarian mother tongue)
- from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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- Book:
- My Shadow in Dachau
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 March 2018
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- 15 June 2014, pp 102-107
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Summary
Örök Gyász
Ha volt valaha mosolyom; elveszett
s az öröm rózsái elhervadtanak,
boldognak lenni immáron nem lehet
s emberben bízni már-már nem szabad.
Mert amit én láttam és megéltem,
az örök gyászra kötelezi éltem.
A borzalmak völgyében, a Lech partjain,
a teuton hordák rettentő réme járt,
szél és fagy, éhség és szolgaság a kín
száz faját dobta ránk s osztotta a halált.
Úgy hulltunk, mint kasza alatt a fűszál
s úgy szállt el kedvünk, mint kéményből füst száll.
Ragyoghat nap, Délnek minden varázsa
hullhat még ránk a szabadság mámora,
de a rettentő élmény látomása
szívünkből nem mosdhat el soha.
Lelkünkön ég szörnyű sebeink gyásza,
melynek nincs és nem lesz vígaşztalása.
Ennyi kínt, pusztulást, vad gyalázatot,
ennyi keservet ember még meg nem élt,
lelkünkből kiölték az áhitatot
s már nem látunk jövőt, nem látunk tiszta célt.
Hamut hintünk fejünkre mindörökre
s tekintetünk rászegezzük a földre.
Mert az egekre többé nem nézhetünk,
ott kihalt a sugár, kihalt már a fény.
Ebek harmincadján teng a létünk,
egyetlen mérges, mérgező kelevény,
amelynek vére vér után kiáltoz
a jajja gyászinduló az örök gyászhoz.
Nincs feledés, íly fájdalmat szívünk
végig őriz s könnyünk nem fogyhat soha.
Az életünkben nincs többé mit hinnünk
mely gonosz volt és süket s mostoha.
Csak zokogni kell és rettentő lánggal
perbeszállni az átkozott világgal.
Endless Mourning
If smiles were mine once, well, now there are none,
the rose of joy has faded from my cheek,
my chance of happiness forever gone,
my faith in other people less than weak.
What I have seen and suffered is a warning
and now I am condemned to endless mourning.
Down terror valley beside the River Lech
the Teuton hordes advanced and brought despair:
servitude, hunger, gales and ice—the wreck
of a hundred tortures, death enough to share.
We were cut down, like grass, under the scythe,
As chimneys belch smoke so rose our sighs and cries.
The sun may blaze with all the magic of noon,
with dizziness of liberty, but the vision
of terrible suffering is like a lightless moon
that darkens the heart and serves as a cold prison.
Deep in our souls the dreadful congregation
of harms for which there is no consolation.
No man has suffered such a bitter share
of pain, destruction, humiliation, grief,
our souls have lost capacity for prayer,
we see no future, no point of relief.
Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
- Edited by Dorothea Heiser, Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg, Stuart Taberner, Professor of Contemporary German Literature
-
- Book:
- My Shadow in Dachau
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 14 March 2018
- Print publication:
- 15 June 2014, pp 17-18
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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.