Holocaust

One evening, a policeman came and told him... So begins Charles Reznikoff's cycle of poems, Holocaust. It could be the beginning of Kafka's Metamorphosis (One evening, as Gregor Samsa was waking...) and what follows in Renikoff is certainly a metamorhosis of the transformation of certain human beings into something lower than monstrous insects to whom all trace and privilege of humanity is denied. But Kafka's world was metaphor, it was imagined. Reznikoff's was a historical record. In fact it was quite precisely a historical record.... writes George Szirtes in the Introduction. The Holocaust in a book length poem using as source material the US Government's record of the trials of Nazi war criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Except for the twelve section titles in the book, none of the words are by Reznikoff. Instead he has created, through selection, arrangement, and the rhythms of the testimony set in verse on the page, a poem of witness by the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets history unforld, in history's own words. Introduced by George Szirtes. Afterword by Janet Sutherland.