The Holocaust

by Regime

  • Poetry

Published November 30, 2016

E - Everyone

In Works

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Comments & reviews · 2
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Casanova
Review
Casanova wrote a review Review · Nov 30, 2016

Heya, Regime! Casanova here to do a review! Because of the length of this poem, I"ll be breaking this up into sections. I hope you don't mind.

The plan was called the Final Solution

A terrible term outlined in crimson

Of the red blood of six million Jews

This horrible crime we cannot excuse

In the dead of night, they left their places

Leaving behind all these friendly faces

Their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers

All of them given to Nazi killers


Okay, so the first thing I noticed about this was the rhyme, and I felt like it was holding you back imagery wise and emotion wise. Sometimes rhyme and meter restrict what we can say, and I felt like that's what happened here. As well as the last line,"All of them given to the Nazi killers." This seems like it doesn't really rhyme with the previous line. You don't just worry about the ending vowel sounds, but also the consonants before the vowel. I don't think the,"th," worked with the,"ll," sound.

For days they traveled in small cattle cars

At night they could not sleep; they saw the stars

And during the day they shattered their pride

They did nothing; they were shot if they tried

Upon arrival there were selections

Left was life; right was extermination

The mothers and daughters, fathers and sons

The children were already the dead ones


I rather like these lines, despite the rhyme. Especially the first two lines.

Although some Jews still lived, they were not saved

They broke their religion and were enslaved

“Where is Yahweh?” Our God has forsaken

His people lay bloody, sick, and beaten

And then their tongues began to taste of dust

Their mouths are dry; after water they lust

The bloody and disgusting taste of death

It covers the lungs, not granting a breath

They are not human; they do not have names

When they waste away, they go up in flames

Towers of smoke and the burning corpse smell

Flames licking the flesh in that pit of hell


I feel like the line,"after water they lust," line was only phrased that way to fit the rhyme scheme, and I didn't particularly like that. Try working it out without the rhyme and playing with it. Overall these lines are decent, and you're getting your imagery across.

I'm going to stop it there to give an overall summary. Overall you have a decent poem idea, but in most places you're lacing emotion and imagery, and you're strewing rhymes all over the place. I would say this needs a tweak, but it's up to you.

That's all I have to say on this one, and I hope it helped.

Keep on doing what you're doing, and keep on keeping on.

Sincerely, Matthew Casanova Aaron

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sfrias1 Review
sfrias1 wrote a review Review · Nov 30, 2016

This was an evocative piece because gone was the statistic and in was the horrible sentiment of the Holocaust. I liked it (As much as one can possible claim to like writing on this subject matter), because it is a tight poem, yet manages to evoke a true message. It focuses on some of the more general images that come to mind when one thinks of the holocaust, and yes I know it's horrible to ever lump such a form of human suffering together or to even generalize it, but your poem does a pretty good job of painting an image, almost like the type that one would expect to see on yellowed old newspapers. I don't know, maybe it's just because I've read so many holocaust novels that it's easy to get caught up on the more "interesting" stories, the ones that somehow are not as bleak as others. Overall though, nice job.



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