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Writing Poetry Helps Me Process the Holocaust’s Unspeakable Evils
BY MENACHEM Z. ROSENSAFT
NOT LONG AFTER the
gruesome reality of the Holocaust
had burst onto the world’s
consciousness, the philosopher
and social theorist Theodor
Adorno famously observed in
1949 that writing poetry after
Auschwitz was barbaric —
“nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu
schreiben, ist barbarisch.”
Less well known but equally
insightful was Adorno’s subse-
quent 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, system-
atic savagery was an absolute
deviation from the fundamental
norms of civilization and
civilized behavior. To be valid,
anything written or said about
the Holocaust, whether in
poetry or prose, must first and
foremost 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.”
And yet, despite all these
flashing yellow lights, I, the son
of two survivors of Auschwitz
and Bergen-Belsen who was
born three years after the end
of World War II in the displaced
persons camp of Bergen-Belsen,
long ago turned to expressing
myself in poetry. Over the
decades I have tried to give voice
to the dead in my poems, to
comfort ghosts, and to provide
a memorial to the millions who
have none.

For me, conceptualizing my
poems is often simultaneously a
refuge and an escape. An escape
from the realm of conventional
human experience into a parallel
internal reality.

We need poems, songs and
parables. We need a Kafkaesque,
morbid language of dreams
and nightmares to be able
to penetrate the nocturnal
universe of Auschwitz and
Birkenau, of
Treblinka, Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen, of
Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and
Terezin, of the Warsaw Ghetto,
Transnistria and Babyn Yar.

A sparse inscription on a
Birkenau barrack wall forces us
to identify with its author without
knowing anything else about
him: ​“Andreas Rapaport — lived
sixteen years.” Aware that he was
about to die, a Jewish teenager
tried to leave a sign, a memory of
his existence on earth. Without
pathos, without self-pity, Andreas
Rapaport was the author of his
own eulogy, his own Kaddish:
Andreas Rapaport — lived sixteen
years. Andreas Rapaport —
abandoned, alone, afraid.

Andreas Rapaport — hungry,
in pain. Andreas Rapaport
— gas-filled lungs. Andreas
Rapaport — incinerated, black
smoke, ashes.

In “Under Your White
stars,” Avraham Sutzkever,
the Yiddish poet of the Vilna
Ghetto, wrote, “stretch out
to me Your white hand. My
words are tears that want to
rest in Your hand.” It is the
beginning of a monologue
addressed to God that never
turns into a dialogue because
there is no response. Against a
“murderous calm” that perme-
ated the precarious existence
of the ghetto’s inhabitants, the
narrator writes: “I run higher,
over rooftops, and I search:
Where are You? Where?”
The poems written by
Sutzkever and other poets
in the ghettos and even in
the Nazi death and concen-
tration camps were their
way of refusing to become
dehumanized, of defying their
oppressors and remaining sane
in a world gone mad.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz-
Birkenau on the night of Aug.

3-4, 1943, a little boy named
Benjamin was separated from
his mother and sent directly
into a gas chamber with his
father and grandparents.

Benjamin was
my half-brother. Even though my
mother rarely spoke about him,
I know that she thought of him
every day of her life. Since her
death in 1997, Benjamin has
continued to exist within me.

I see his face in my mind, try
to imagine his voice, his fear as
the gas chamber doors slammed
shut, his final tears. If I were to
forget him, he would disappear.

And I write about him so
that my grandchildren, and
their children and grandchil-
dren in turn, will remember
Benjamin as well. My poems
are my legacy to them. l
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is
associate executive vice president
and general counsel of the World
Jewish Congress and teaches
about the law of genocide at the
law schools of Columbia and
Cornell universities.

Calling Any Jewish Woman a ‘JAP’ is Offensive —
But Not for the Reason You Think
BY IVY HUMBARGER
THE TERM “Jewish American
Princess” has been debated
within Jewish communities for
as long as it has existed. Many
bemoan it for perpetuating
14 APRIL 15, 2021
sexism and negative stereo-
types of Jewish women, while
others have argued that despite
these origins, there’s a power in
embracing the moniker.

But as a Jew of Japanese
descent, I’m here to say the much
larger problem comes from the
acronym used in its place: JAP.

There needs to be a conversation
about the dangerous and violent
history of the racist slur “jap,”
and why Jewish people should
not want to co-opt this word.

For those unaware, “jap”
is a racial slur used against
Japanese people. World War
II-era America best showcases
the dangers of this hateful word.

As we all know, the war
brought much suffering to many
groups of people. And while
America claims to be the hero
that saved the world, the asser-
tion often ignores or justifies
its treatment of the Japanese.

In Japan, America dropped
devastating bombs on civilian
cities that resulted in 225,000
deaths, which is likely an under-
estimated count, according
to UCLA. Stateside, the U.S.

government deported Japanese
Americans — fellow citizens
— to Japan, as bargaining
chips to trade for American
prisoners. In 1942, the U.S.

government forcibly relocated
JEWISH EXPONENT
and incarcerated some 120,000
Japanese Americans, two-thirds
of whom were natural-born
citizens. These people were ripped
from their homes by the govern-
ment and placed in makeshift
internment camps in the desert
on the West Coast. They had no
trials and nobody to save them.

In 1942, Gen. John DeWitt,
commander of the Western
Defense Command, said, “A
Jap’s a Jap. It makes no difference
whether the Jap is a citizen or
not.” That same year, Col. Karl
Bendetsen of the Wartime Civil
Control Administration said, “I
am determined that if they have
one drop of Japanese blood in
them, they must go to camp.”
The homes and businesses
of Japanese Americans were
destroyed, looted and vandal-
ized. The word “japs” was
everywhere. Spray-painted on
homes, on the front page of
newspapers, on signs and posters.

People protested the presence of
Japanese people in America in
the streets and from the comfort
of their homes. Businesses put
up signs banning Japanese from
entering the premises, saying
“No japs allowed.”
These were innocent citizens,
many of whom came here for the
“American dream.” Like many
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Jewish immigrants who came
to the U.S. at the turn of the
century, the Japanese came for
opportunity, for the chance at
greatness, yet America did what
America always does.

This history is America, and
it is the history of my heritage in
this country. This is not a history
that you can ask Japanese people
to forget. Jap is not just a word;
it’s a searing symbol of hate.

Growing up with a Japanese
relative in metro Detroit, I was
very familiar with the use of jap.

It’s been hurled at me, and I’ve
felt the pain that the term evokes.

My grandfather was born in
Okinawa, Japan, sometime in
January 1953, with the name
Susumi Kise. As a baby he
was put up for adoption at the
Yonabaru orphanage in Naha,
Okinawa. There is no documen-
tation of his parents, whether
they were alive or dead when he
was brought to the orphanage.

He was adopted as a young child
by an American family stationed
on the island and spent three
years waiting to immigrate to
the United States under the
Refugee Relief Act. Upon his
arrival in the U.S., he became
the youngest-ever naturalized
citizen in Detroit and the first
person for whom the Michigan
city ever waived the oral oath.

Despite how incredible of
a headliner this situation was
the novelty of the story quickly
wore off. My grandfather was
brought overseas to a racist
America that hated him and saw
him as a traitor while still seeing
themselves as his savior. He was
brought to an America that less
than 10 years before bombed
his country and locked up his
people in the desert. He faced
endless racism throughout his
life — was bullied as a child in
school, experienced discrimina-
tion from employers, endured
harsh xenophobia from my white
grandmother’s family when they
announced their relationship
and intention to have children,
or as they said, “interbreed.”
When people use the slur
jap, they’re using it against my
grandpa, against his people and
against everything they have
ever been through. And that
causes me immense pain.

The first time I ever saw
the term JAP used to signify
Jewish American Princess was
from a Jewish person on Twitter.

Initially I thought I had stumbled
across another Jew of Japanese
descent. I mean, who else would
use this slur so lightly? Upon
reading their profile I realized
they weren’t Japanese at all,
and I became very concerned
and confused. I had to resort to
googling “Jewish JAP” to find
the meaning. I was shocked and
disappointed to see that Jews
online were lightly using a slur
as an acronym.

This experience was so
isolating and hurtful as I began
to feel unsafe in the online Jewish
community. I have desperately
tried to gain the attention of Jews
online to warn them of this slur,
and to beg them to stop using it,
but it has always been to no avail.

No matter how many times
I see it used as Jewish American
Princess, I cannot separate
it from the hate word used to
vandalize Japanese-American
homes. Jewish people understand
all too well pain and suffering,
being othered and singled out,
and we should never subject
others to that feeling. It is
especially important as a diverse
people who span the world that
we as Jews work hard to be as
inclusive as possible.

Jewish women want to
reclaim Jewish American
Princess? I support that. But
please take the extra five seconds
and spell out the phrase. As Jews,
it’s the least we can do. l
Ivy Humbarger is a Jewish food
worker of Ashkenazi and Japanese
descent studying forensic
A Shooter Terrorized My Favorite Grocery Store.

This Simple Jewish Prayer for Dew is Helping Me Mourn
BY LISA TRANK
THE DAY WAS COLD, but not
too cold — typical March weather
for the Rocky Mountains. I was
heading to Boulder to pick up
one of our daughters from the
University of Colorado. COVID
had canceled their regular spring
break, but she needed some time
away from campus, so off I went.

Her twin sister had opted to stay
on campus.

I stopped at the King Soopers
in South Longmont, a town
12 miles northeast of Boulder.

We’ve shopped at this store for
the 21 years we’ve lived in this
town. Many of the employees
have been there the whole time,
from the days when I’d push
the bright red car cart with
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM three kids to now, shopping for
my husband and myself. This
morning, I was picking up a few
of our daughter’s favorite items
— blueberries, Yerba Mate, fresh
basil for the pesto I was planning
on making for dinner that night.

I arrived at her dorm and texted
her. She scrambled in and we
turned back toward home. She had
an essay due and lots of studying
for calculus and chemistry. She
was excited to see our dog and
sleep in her own bed. As we
pulled off the Diagonal Highway,
the thin stretch of road that
connects Longmont to Boulder,
my daughter said, “I got an alert.

There’s an active shooter at the
South Boulder King Soopers.”
I drove the two or three
miles home with a nervous pit
growing in my stomach. I turned
on my computer and proceeded
to watch in horror. I called our
other daughter. She was safe and
very anxious. I began to make
plans to head back to pick her up
when a second area of Boulder
was being investigated and shut
down. I realized I couldn’t get to
her. I told her to stay in her room.

A few hours later, the extent
of the tragedy was made public:
Ten people, including three store
employees and a Boulder police
officer, were dead. Ten people
killed in less than one hour.

While shopping and working at
a grocery store.

Friends on Facebook who live
in Boulder marked themselves
“safe.” I received texts and calls
asking if we were OK. I marked
myself and my family “safe.”
That was 10 days ago.

My husband and I lived in
Boulder for six years before
moving to Longmont, and have
shopped at that very King Soopers
store many, many times. Our
family has enjoyed celebratory
brunches at a cafe located in the
same shopping center, and we
have friends who live in that area.

One of our daughters worked at a
grocery store last summer.

Two days after the shooting,
my husband and I brought our
daughter back to campus. We
arrived in Boulder at sunset, pink
and orange clouds converging over
the Flatirons. For the first time
since the shooting, I cried. Brief,
hot tears jutted down my cheeks.

We took both girls to get
JEWISH EXPONENT
something to eat, dropped them
back at school and drove back to
Longmont in silence.

In the days that followed, I
went through the motions and
prepared for Passover. In the entry
of our King Soopers were three
simple flower arrangements on a
folding table with a handwritten
sign: “in their honor.”
I bought daffodils, tulips
and yahrzeit candles along with
whatever was on my list. I went
home, cooked soup and kugel,
and set the seder table.

The next morning, I received
an email message titled “A Prayer
for Dew.” I opened the email
and read the prayer. I knew we
prayed for rain on Sukkot, but
dew on Passover?
“Dew, precious dew, unto
Your land forlorn ...”
When faced with such a huge
sense of loss, especially for a
quiet and connected community
like Boulder, Sandy Hook,
Atlanta, Pittsburgh and every
place in our country hit by gun
violence, we often turn to prayer
for comfort and answers, as well
as to honor those lost.

I tried to pray, but the vastness
of the grief caused by unmitigated
gun violence is overwhelming. I
had no idea where to start.

Perhaps I could simply pray
for a drop of dew.

This morning, I woke up to
snow dusting on grass that is
trying hard to turn green and
tulips pushing themselves out
of the hard, cold earth. It’s not
dew, but that will come. Spring
is short in the Rocky Mountains.

“Dew, precious dew to make
the mountains sweet ...” l
Lisa Trank is a writer of Jewish
children’s literature, personal
essays and lifestyle articles. She
lives in Longmont, Colorado.

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APRIL 15, 2021
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