6 | APRIL 15 • 2021 

N

ot long after the grue-
some reality of the 
Holocaust had burst 
onto the world’s consciousness, 
the philosopher and social 
theorist Theodor 
Adorno famous-
ly observed 
in 1949 that 
writing poetry 
after Auschwitz 
was barbaric — 
“nach Auschwitz 
ein Gedicht zu 
schreiben, ist bar-
barisch.
”
Less well known but equally 
insightful was Adorno’s sub-
sequent conclusion, expressed 
in a 1966 radio address in 
Germany, that Auschwitz, 
itself, constituted nothing less 

than a “relapse into barbarism.”
Adorno understood that the 
Shoah’s calculated, systematic 
savagery was an absolute devi-
ation from the fundamental 
norms of civilization and civi-
lized behavior. To be valid, any-

thing written or said about the 
Holocaust, whether in poetry 
or prose, must first and fore-
most encapsulate and reflect 
its barbaric essence. Aesthetic 
sensitivities and considerations 
must yield to the undeniable 

absolute evil that sparked and 
perpetrated the genocide of 
European Jewry, requiring us 
to absorb and try to come to 
terms with the unprecedented, 
the unfathomable and, above 
all, the inexplicable. 
Perhaps the most cogent 
context for this inexorable 
immersion into the unknown 
was given by my late teacher 
and mentor Elie Wiesel, who 
explained in his essay “
A Plea 
for the Dead” that “
Auschwitz 
signifies not only the failure 
of two thousand years of 
Christian civilization, but also 
the defeat of the intellect that 
wants to find a Meaning — 
with a capital M — in history. 
What Auschwitz embodied had 
none.” 

Menachem 
Z. Rosensaft
Times of 
Israel

GETTY IMAGES/JTA

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 10

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essay
Writing Poetry Helps Me Process
the Unspeakable Evils of the Holocaust

Barbed wire fence against a dark sky

