From Library Journal
This volume of the Holocaust poems of Jacob Glatstein (1896-1971) is a welcome addition to Yiddish scholarship available in translation. Living in the United States during World War II, Glatstein wrote poems that gave voice to the anguish of the victims as well as the suffering and mourning of American Jews. The poems create a literary approach to the Holocaust through use of elegy and lamentation. In the poem "Millions of Dead," Glatstein beseeches the world not to forget. "If one plows and sows in burial ground/ It will yield dark grain/ But the wheat and rye will always taste of/ Millions of dead." Zumoff's translations, appearing alongside the Yiddish poems, are truly inspired. Recommended for libraries with large poetry and Jewish studies collections.
- Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Bergen-Belsen survivors culled the Holocaust poems from Glatstein's last six volumes of poetry to make up this collection that commemorates Jewish strength, horror, and fortitude and that honors the inestimable losses of the past. Throughout the dual-language (Yiddish and English translation) volume, Glatstein asks, "How can a living Jew forgive?" and then answers, "How are we to remember and live?" He uses traditional Jewish elegy and lamentation, says Emanuel Goldsmith in his introduction, to give "voice to the anguish of the victims but also to the suffering and mourning of American Jews who devoured newspapers and radio broadcasts with horror throughout those nightmarish years." But the poet also finds consolation in a memorial service and exalts that "in death they've thrown open the gates of the ghetto . . . they've given us faith." He summarizes, "It's not that they died for us, / But that we are condemned to live for them, / So that their death may flow in our veins, / So that we may horrify the world." Whitney Scott
