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The Girl-Child of Pompei

Teaching the Holocaust and other Genocides

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“The Girl-Child of Pompei”

Since everyone’s anguish is our own,
We live ours over again, thin child,
Clutching your mother convulsively
As though, when the noon sky turned black,
You wanted to re-enter her.
To no avail, because the air, turned poison,
Filtered to find you through the closed windows
Of your quiet, thick-walled house,
Once happy with your song, your timid laugh.
Centuries have passed, the ash has petrified
To imprison those delicated limbs forever.
In this way you stay with us, a twisted plaster cast,
Agony without end, terrible witness to how much
Our proud seed matters to the gods.
Nothing is left of your far-removed sister,
The Dutch girl imprisoned by four walls
Who wrote of her youth without tomorrows.
Her silent ash was scattered by the wind,
Her brief life shut in a crumpled notebook.
Nothing remains of the Hiroshima schoolgirl,
A shadow printed on a wall by the light of a thousand suns,
Victim sacrificed on the altar of fear.
Powerful of the earth, masters of new poisons,
Sad secret guardians of final thunder,
The torments heaven sends us are enough.
Before your finger presses down, stop and consider.                                        

                                                            -Primo Levi, 1978

Levi, Primo. “The Girl Child of Pompei.” 1978.  Audiopoetry.wordpress.com, 2006. https://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/2006/08/08/the-girl-child-of-pompei/.

Guiding Questions:

1.      How does the speaker imagine the child’s and mother’s final moments when Vesuvius erupted?

2.      How does the girl-child’s body, petrified in ash, serve as an enduring symbol of the destructive forces of nature?

3.      What does the speaker note about the human relationship with uncontrollable natural forces?

4.      Anne Frank is another youth who lost her life. Although her ash “was scattered by the wind,” what is the one physical reminder of her brief
         existence overshadowed by the brutality of the Holocaust?

5.      The girl from Hiroshima is just a “shadow printed on the wall.” What is her similarity to Anne Frank and the girl of Pompeii?

6.       Against what are humans powerless? Whom does the speaker implore to preserve innocent lives? When do humans exercise control over life
          and death?