How by Abraham Sutzkever

How by Abraham Sutzkever

When Abraham Sutzkever wrote “How?” in February 1943, he was only seven months from his own freedom, yet the ghetto itself was still one year and five months from emancipation. Yet his portrayal of “the day of Liberation” appears very similar to a day in the Nazi ghettos, where time is extended through pain, devastation, and fear. The only difference felt is the frustration of their memories and their powerlessness to proceed past the hatred and pain that were connected to the deaths of thousands, both literally and figuratively. These dark memories are not forgotten by time, and his imagined survival of the Jews appears bleak and tedious; the pain and gloom of their experiences overshadowing their hopeful freedom in the future.

Although the first line within Sutzkever’s poem appears hopeful, its following lines reflect the bitter darkness and gloom that the Holocaust embodied. “Dark scream,” “skulls,” “jammed locks,” “buried city,” “eternal gaze,” and “mole” in particular help to paint a vivid picture of emotions that the Jewish people felt in response to Hitler’s wrath. The “dark scream of your past,” depicts a piercing, blood curdling scream from the very depths of a person’s soul, in this case spurred by the horrific memories from the victims' past, which they were forced to own and contend with. In this scream, “Where skulls of days congeal/ In a bottomless pit?” not only thrusts the readers into the common occurrences of the ghettos, but also reflects the endlessness of their situation. Death, represented through the skulls, is almost inevitable, and even if one does survive, one cannot escape from the hopeless memories. Furthermore, by “congealing” the dead into one mass and nam...

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...utzkever’s title, “How?” echoes the doubt he feels about overcoming the oppression of his people, realizing the difficulty of the journey ahead. Even Sutzkever does not know how liberation can be perceived with the dark gloom of the past’s memories haunting the Jews. These dark memories are not forgotten by time by the Jewish people, allowing Sutzkever’s imagined survival to appear bleak and tedious; the pain and gloom of the bitter experiences overshadow their hopeful freedom in the future. Luckily, hindsight is twenty-twenty, and current audiences feel the distress and anguish of the author and his people, but know that Jewish people were able to survive their persecution, and grew strong because of it, despite the fact that it was a horrifyingly long and painful, yet life changing, experience.

Bibliography:

Abraham Sutzkever, “How?” 1943.