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The Sun of Auschwitz

Teaching the Holocaust and other Genocides

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The Sun of Auschwitz

You remember the sun of Auschwitz
and the green of the distant meadows, lightly
lifted to the clouds by birds,
no longer green in the clouds,
but sea green white. Together
we stood looking into the distance and felt
the far away green of the meadows and the clouds’
sea green white within us,
as if the color of the distant meadows
were our blood or the pulse
beating within us, as if the world
existed only through us and nothing changed
as long as we were there. I remember
your smile as elusive
as a shade of the color of the wind,
a leaf trembling on the edge
of sun and shadow, fleeting
yet always there. So you are
for me today, in the sea green
sky, the greenery and
the leaf-rustling wind. I feel you
in every shadow, every movement,
and you put the world around me
like your arms. I feel the world
as your body, you look into my eyes
and call me with the whole world.

                                    -Tadeusz Borowski, 1941

Source:  Borowski, Tadeusz. "Poetry of Tadeusz Borowski." WordPress, 17 Nov. 2024.
https://poetryoftadeuszborowski.wordpress.com/poems/.

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Questions:

1.      Consider how the natural world provided great solace for the speaker and his beloved, though they were imprisoned in Auschwitz.

2.      Consider how the beloved’s memory becomes one with both nature and the speaker and transcends their separation.