Photo of Auschwitz concentration camp‘Ghosts: At the gate of Auschwitz’: A Poem for Israel by Michael Vanyukov The Society January 4, 2024 Culture, Poetry 17 Comments . Ghosts: At the gate of Auschwitz Наш поезд уходит в Освенцим— Сегодня и ежедневно (Our train is departing for Auschwitz, today as it does every day) —А . Галич, “Поезд. Памяти С. М. Михоэлса” (A. Galich, “The Train. In memoriam Solomon Mikhoels) In Auschwitz, it’s cold. It is winter. The smokestacks—they no longer breathe, forgetting their natural instinct, allowing the ashes to freeze. No longer they’re calmly exhaling what’s left of the fuel they ate. They’ve been just a part of the hell and they’d end what would start at the gate— the jaws that would swallow young mothers and children, to turn them to dust. The forks of the rails are another detail. Sure, do look if you must. And sure don’t you miss any oven, a stomach of that hungry beast: that’s where it soon would be over— for those who did feed it, at least, who entered the maw that the nations prepared for the people they hate. They preach of their love, with a passion— but saving it till it’s too late. They’d weep for the dead, but the live ones— ah, they could be murdered again: if history is any guidance, the Jews die like none other can… That’s why I would never believe in the ghosts: they would thrive in this place. They would give no rest to the living— but there have been no such complaints. Or maybe that absence makes certain— the opposite’s true of this hell: it’s no place for them who were murdered. They are where the saintly ones dwell. They saw all this world’s tender mercies. They know that it spares no one, believing it’s good that it worships, regardless of what it has done. The world does not seem to be sorry. No pangs of emotions, no fright. while evil that’s no less abhorrent is gathering forces, to smite, to slaughter, to drive out of their wits the calm and the cool—kind or mean. Agape is the muzzle of Auschwitz— again, as it ever has been. . . Michael Vanyukov is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Psychiatry, and Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh. He immigrated to the United States 30 years ago as a refugee from the Soviet Union. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. Trending now: 17 Responses Cynthia Erlandson January 4, 2024 What an amazingly moving poem, Michael. Ashes freezing; jaws of a hungry beast — so many gruesome but incredibly accurate images. In addition to strongly feeling the poignant content, I am fascinated by the way you used so many near-rhymes that somehow seemed just perfect for this subject (exhaling/hell and; live ones/guidance; believe in/living; sorry/abhorrent, for example) — though there are many perfect rhymes as well. I think this poem does an excellent job of the very important thing it set out to do. Reply Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Dear Cynthia, thank you very much for your kindness and for noticing the imperfect rhymes. Those come from my Russian language heritage, where they are much more common than in English – to the degree than the perfect rhymes may sound archaic. Whether that is a stupid quirk of mine or a forgivable idiosyncrasy, when looking for a rhyme I prefer the imperfect one. Reply Roy Eugene Peterson January 4, 2024 That is a wonderful poem with fitting somber words and a great answer to the unforgiveable horrors that took place at Auschwitz. I have a story for you. When I was a student in Germany at the U.S. Army Russian Institute, our class took a trip to Poland and visited Auschwitz. I was walked along beside a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel as we passed rooms filled with such things as shoes and toothbrushes. He stopped at the room with bags that had stamps of names on them. He stood there and I noted a tear on his face as his head moved back and forth. I said you really are touched. He looked at me with a sad face and said, “I am looking for the name on the bag of my relatives who died here.” Reply Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Dear Roy, thank you for the kind words and the story. It cuts my heart like a knife. None of my (known) relatives ended up in Auschwitz – their final place was Baby Yar. There is a cliche, “unimaginable cruelty” – but the recent events do not require any imagination to understand why our train is departing there… Reply Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 I give my deepest thanks to Brian Yapko and Evan Mantyk, who have contributed to this so much as editors that, if it were a scientific paper, I’d have them as co-authors. Reply Mary Gardner January 4, 2024 Michael, this is powerful. It expresses well the loathsomeness of the place and the event. Thank you. Reply Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Mary, I am so grateful! Reply Brian A. Yapko January 4, 2024 Michael, this is a poem of such power that I stopped breathing when I first read it. I felt strongly that this is an important poem that should be seen and receive a wide audience. You are kind to acknowledge me in your comment above but all I did was praise your work and point out some things that might give readers pause or which might detract from the message. My editing suggestions were de minimis. You’re the one who wrote this in a voice seared with pain. It’s terrifying and magnificent. From a form standpoint, in my original reading I did not recognize the rigor with which you alternate 8 and 9 syllable lines. I rarely pay attention to syllable-counts but once I understood what you were doing was struck by your skillful attention to detail. I also tend to gloss over slant rhymes — but to do so in this case would be a mistake. The slant rhymes speak of your Russian literary background and, at the same time (at least from an English-speaker standpoint) give a hint at how slanted the entire concentration camp experience must have been — chaotic despite brutal attempts to impose order. Some of your images are terrifying: “the jaws that would swallow young mothers/ and children, to turn them to dust.” Some of your observations are infuriatingly accurate: “They preach of their love, with a passion— but saving it till it’s too late./They’d weep for the dead, but the live ones— ah, they could be murdered again…” Yes, the world has long loved dead Jews, Jews that they can feel sorry for. As you sardonically point out, “The Jews die like none other can” — a line of almost Plath-like understatement. But in these Hamas-loving times, the left performs the ultimate act of gaslighting by calling Israeli Jews “Nazis” for refusing to die, for daring to fight back, for daring to fight the war that they in their corrupt dereliction of duty, refuse to fight or even support. It’s as if it were 1941 and everyone in the free world gave Churchill the finger. Your language is poetic but grittily realistic: Auschwitz’s muzzle (fascinating image) is agape as it ever has been. You are pointing this out to a world that has lost its moral compass. I don’t know if it will make a difference among those who willingly embrace hatred, but nonetheless I think the world is a little bit better for your doing so. Thank you for that. Reply Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Brian, your review, if I can call it that, made me replay in my head the emotions I had had while writing, and I know you felt it to the maximum. I can’t thank you enough. Reply Cheryl Corey January 4, 2024 The final eight lines, beginning with “The world does not seem to be sorry.” are so very truthful; and part of the problem, I believe, is the woeful state of education. A course in the Holocaust should be a mandatory part of curriculum as early as high school. It’s bad enough that young people today are ignorant of the events which took place on 9/11. Reply Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Dear Cheryl, you are so right about education. Regrettably, I think we are beyond repair in that area. Worse yet, even where Holocaust is taught, that is not connected to today’s reality. Not to progressive ideology, not to Islam, not to really systemic racism. That leaves all that information in the past and barely relevant, with a vague sensation of guilt that the current progressive ignoramuses only happy to shed by accusing the Jews of unspeakable evil, justifying their newly reframed Jew-hate. Anti-Israel propaganda, antisemitism recast as a “critique,” spewed from as high as this country president (“indiscriminate bombing”), outweighs any possible truth un education. Reply Margaret Coats January 4, 2024 Michael, this is a profound and far-reaching poem. There is an obvious contemporary comparison of Auschwitz to recent attacks on the nation of Israel. But you never say “Nazis” or “Hamas.” The killers of Jews are “the world.” This may have begun as soon as the ancient Hebrews became a nation in ancient Egypt, with the attempt to destroy them by killing all newborn males. It is interesting that the first incident called a pogrom, though taking place a little after the time of Christ, had nothing to do with Christians but was instigated in Alexandria by a native Egyptian governor appointed by Romans. When you say “the world,” this sounds like all non-Jews, but I might rather specify Jew killing by “the world” as taking place when rulers of the world promote or encourage it, or at least do nothing to stop it. It is official or quasi-official killing. And it is done by those who preach love, which would seem to mean Christians. Historical pogroms have occurred in Christian nations, but there are also some long before now in Muslim lands. Thus I think the “love” to which you refer may mean the self-interest or self-love of any who hate Jews as not belonging to their group. However, I am interested by the use of “agape” at the end of the poem. This means “open” in English and could just mean that Auschwitz is again open for business. But it is also the Greek term for the higher kind of love Christians should have for one another. I wonder if you intend to say that this love, considered as something Christians feel for one another but not for non-Christians, is the very mouth of Auschwitz and all historic killing of Jews? Whether or not that is suggested, the poem is an ambitious work carefully pondering, in a relatively brief scope, the long history of which Auschwitz is merely the most notable symbol. There are many, more ghosts than the number of Jews who died at Auschwitz, which is another reason you do not find them at the gates of the former death camp. Reply Michael Vanyukov January 5, 2024 Dear Margaret, “Ghosts” were written on July 1, 2017, with no connection to a particular event. I had simply looked, for a millionth time, at the picture like the one you see on the top, with the muzzle and forks imagery straight from there. It would be preposterous of me to claim that I could imagine the feelings of the Jews (sure, not only Jews) who were unloaded at that muzzle. Or even of the locals from the nearby village of Oswiecim, and of the visitors – they are invited to look at this and that. And they come from the entire world. Before far into the XX century, Jew-hate was a default in the world. In was endemic in Eastern Europe, but Western Europe, its most advanced country, produced the Shoah. The prior centuries saw exiles, pogroms, forced conversions, mass murders – but the Shoah was the culmination, which was not stopped by the world nor were the Jews given any nation-saving respite – or, with rare exceptions, even more or less mass-saving. The Struma. The St. Louis. The latter, of course, concerns the US, as does the well known refusal of the Roosevelt administration to bomb the rails. That is, the entire world. It is by no clairvoyance of mine that what I write on the topic fits our times as well. It’s enough to look at the UN, at Macron demanding ceasefire or at Biden falsely accusing Israel of “indiscriminate bombing,” at the young Americans, future leaders of this country and the world, cheering infernal Arab savages, to see that it’s the entire world again. No, it’s no longer coming from Christianity – which, after all, has no scriptural foundation for Jewish genocide. Islam does, however. Its Gharqad tree hadith is only quoted by Hamas in its covenant, but it is accepted by the Muslim world as an authentic part of the Sunna. You are right, of course – I am happy you noticed the agape homograph. To me, it echoed, like a horrific double-face card, the preaching of love and the tender mercies. As the epigraph says, Auschwitz has always been open for business, despite its frozen smokestacks. Thank you so much for your deep thinking. It flatters me greatly. Reply Susan Jarvis Bryant January 5, 2024 Michael, this powerful poem of heinous acts of horror, the reactions to it, and mention of the ravenous beast of evil still gnashing its teeth, is laced with linguistic beauty that sings beneath the terrifying message… an admirable accomplishment. The closing lines should be a grave warning to all those ignoring the shocking signs of impending doom today. “Agape is the muzzle of Auschwitz— again, as it ever has been.” is an image I can’t shake. Very well done, indeed! Reply Michael Vanyukov January 5, 2024 Dear Susan, this is truly inspirational. It does wonders to my mood, which is actually poisoned by what’s going on at the universities and among the educated but ignorant youth. Your words reassure me that the words can be found that are capable of evoking the same emotions as I had when writing. Thank you very much indeed! Reply Daniel Kemper January 6, 2024 This poem, much for topic matter and tone, but less for structure, shows a kinship with Celan’s “Death Fugue.” Both are transporting poems. Sorry for the pun. I just can’t believe what I’m witnessing at universities. Genocide? Of a poplulation that has steadily, rapidly climbed ever since Israel existed and is now at over five-million? Worst attempted genocide ever. And of course, the vile idiocy doesn’t stop there… We need more poetic reminders~ Thank you for this one. Reply Michael Vanyukov January 6, 2024 Dear Daniel, thank you for the reference—in my ignorance, I’ve not read Celan before. For the Jews, the times bring another return of the flame of evil—from the burning Temple to 1190 York to auto-da-fe to German crematoria to Hamas gasoline. It’s all the same—in Kielce, Gaza City, Ramallah, or Boston MA. Pretexts may change, but the reasons do not. The “genocide” is as good as deicide—it is as true as any blood libel that has been invented to murder Jews. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Cynthia Erlandson January 4, 2024 What an amazingly moving poem, Michael. Ashes freezing; jaws of a hungry beast — so many gruesome but incredibly accurate images. In addition to strongly feeling the poignant content, I am fascinated by the way you used so many near-rhymes that somehow seemed just perfect for this subject (exhaling/hell and; live ones/guidance; believe in/living; sorry/abhorrent, for example) — though there are many perfect rhymes as well. I think this poem does an excellent job of the very important thing it set out to do. Reply
Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Dear Cynthia, thank you very much for your kindness and for noticing the imperfect rhymes. Those come from my Russian language heritage, where they are much more common than in English – to the degree than the perfect rhymes may sound archaic. Whether that is a stupid quirk of mine or a forgivable idiosyncrasy, when looking for a rhyme I prefer the imperfect one. Reply
Roy Eugene Peterson January 4, 2024 That is a wonderful poem with fitting somber words and a great answer to the unforgiveable horrors that took place at Auschwitz. I have a story for you. When I was a student in Germany at the U.S. Army Russian Institute, our class took a trip to Poland and visited Auschwitz. I was walked along beside a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel as we passed rooms filled with such things as shoes and toothbrushes. He stopped at the room with bags that had stamps of names on them. He stood there and I noted a tear on his face as his head moved back and forth. I said you really are touched. He looked at me with a sad face and said, “I am looking for the name on the bag of my relatives who died here.” Reply
Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Dear Roy, thank you for the kind words and the story. It cuts my heart like a knife. None of my (known) relatives ended up in Auschwitz – their final place was Baby Yar. There is a cliche, “unimaginable cruelty” – but the recent events do not require any imagination to understand why our train is departing there… Reply
Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 I give my deepest thanks to Brian Yapko and Evan Mantyk, who have contributed to this so much as editors that, if it were a scientific paper, I’d have them as co-authors. Reply
Mary Gardner January 4, 2024 Michael, this is powerful. It expresses well the loathsomeness of the place and the event. Thank you. Reply
Brian A. Yapko January 4, 2024 Michael, this is a poem of such power that I stopped breathing when I first read it. I felt strongly that this is an important poem that should be seen and receive a wide audience. You are kind to acknowledge me in your comment above but all I did was praise your work and point out some things that might give readers pause or which might detract from the message. My editing suggestions were de minimis. You’re the one who wrote this in a voice seared with pain. It’s terrifying and magnificent. From a form standpoint, in my original reading I did not recognize the rigor with which you alternate 8 and 9 syllable lines. I rarely pay attention to syllable-counts but once I understood what you were doing was struck by your skillful attention to detail. I also tend to gloss over slant rhymes — but to do so in this case would be a mistake. The slant rhymes speak of your Russian literary background and, at the same time (at least from an English-speaker standpoint) give a hint at how slanted the entire concentration camp experience must have been — chaotic despite brutal attempts to impose order. Some of your images are terrifying: “the jaws that would swallow young mothers/ and children, to turn them to dust.” Some of your observations are infuriatingly accurate: “They preach of their love, with a passion— but saving it till it’s too late./They’d weep for the dead, but the live ones— ah, they could be murdered again…” Yes, the world has long loved dead Jews, Jews that they can feel sorry for. As you sardonically point out, “The Jews die like none other can” — a line of almost Plath-like understatement. But in these Hamas-loving times, the left performs the ultimate act of gaslighting by calling Israeli Jews “Nazis” for refusing to die, for daring to fight back, for daring to fight the war that they in their corrupt dereliction of duty, refuse to fight or even support. It’s as if it were 1941 and everyone in the free world gave Churchill the finger. Your language is poetic but grittily realistic: Auschwitz’s muzzle (fascinating image) is agape as it ever has been. You are pointing this out to a world that has lost its moral compass. I don’t know if it will make a difference among those who willingly embrace hatred, but nonetheless I think the world is a little bit better for your doing so. Thank you for that. Reply
Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Brian, your review, if I can call it that, made me replay in my head the emotions I had had while writing, and I know you felt it to the maximum. I can’t thank you enough. Reply
Cheryl Corey January 4, 2024 The final eight lines, beginning with “The world does not seem to be sorry.” are so very truthful; and part of the problem, I believe, is the woeful state of education. A course in the Holocaust should be a mandatory part of curriculum as early as high school. It’s bad enough that young people today are ignorant of the events which took place on 9/11. Reply
Michael Vanyukov January 4, 2024 Dear Cheryl, you are so right about education. Regrettably, I think we are beyond repair in that area. Worse yet, even where Holocaust is taught, that is not connected to today’s reality. Not to progressive ideology, not to Islam, not to really systemic racism. That leaves all that information in the past and barely relevant, with a vague sensation of guilt that the current progressive ignoramuses only happy to shed by accusing the Jews of unspeakable evil, justifying their newly reframed Jew-hate. Anti-Israel propaganda, antisemitism recast as a “critique,” spewed from as high as this country president (“indiscriminate bombing”), outweighs any possible truth un education. Reply
Margaret Coats January 4, 2024 Michael, this is a profound and far-reaching poem. There is an obvious contemporary comparison of Auschwitz to recent attacks on the nation of Israel. But you never say “Nazis” or “Hamas.” The killers of Jews are “the world.” This may have begun as soon as the ancient Hebrews became a nation in ancient Egypt, with the attempt to destroy them by killing all newborn males. It is interesting that the first incident called a pogrom, though taking place a little after the time of Christ, had nothing to do with Christians but was instigated in Alexandria by a native Egyptian governor appointed by Romans. When you say “the world,” this sounds like all non-Jews, but I might rather specify Jew killing by “the world” as taking place when rulers of the world promote or encourage it, or at least do nothing to stop it. It is official or quasi-official killing. And it is done by those who preach love, which would seem to mean Christians. Historical pogroms have occurred in Christian nations, but there are also some long before now in Muslim lands. Thus I think the “love” to which you refer may mean the self-interest or self-love of any who hate Jews as not belonging to their group. However, I am interested by the use of “agape” at the end of the poem. This means “open” in English and could just mean that Auschwitz is again open for business. But it is also the Greek term for the higher kind of love Christians should have for one another. I wonder if you intend to say that this love, considered as something Christians feel for one another but not for non-Christians, is the very mouth of Auschwitz and all historic killing of Jews? Whether or not that is suggested, the poem is an ambitious work carefully pondering, in a relatively brief scope, the long history of which Auschwitz is merely the most notable symbol. There are many, more ghosts than the number of Jews who died at Auschwitz, which is another reason you do not find them at the gates of the former death camp. Reply
Michael Vanyukov January 5, 2024 Dear Margaret, “Ghosts” were written on July 1, 2017, with no connection to a particular event. I had simply looked, for a millionth time, at the picture like the one you see on the top, with the muzzle and forks imagery straight from there. It would be preposterous of me to claim that I could imagine the feelings of the Jews (sure, not only Jews) who were unloaded at that muzzle. Or even of the locals from the nearby village of Oswiecim, and of the visitors – they are invited to look at this and that. And they come from the entire world. Before far into the XX century, Jew-hate was a default in the world. In was endemic in Eastern Europe, but Western Europe, its most advanced country, produced the Shoah. The prior centuries saw exiles, pogroms, forced conversions, mass murders – but the Shoah was the culmination, which was not stopped by the world nor were the Jews given any nation-saving respite – or, with rare exceptions, even more or less mass-saving. The Struma. The St. Louis. The latter, of course, concerns the US, as does the well known refusal of the Roosevelt administration to bomb the rails. That is, the entire world. It is by no clairvoyance of mine that what I write on the topic fits our times as well. It’s enough to look at the UN, at Macron demanding ceasefire or at Biden falsely accusing Israel of “indiscriminate bombing,” at the young Americans, future leaders of this country and the world, cheering infernal Arab savages, to see that it’s the entire world again. No, it’s no longer coming from Christianity – which, after all, has no scriptural foundation for Jewish genocide. Islam does, however. Its Gharqad tree hadith is only quoted by Hamas in its covenant, but it is accepted by the Muslim world as an authentic part of the Sunna. You are right, of course – I am happy you noticed the agape homograph. To me, it echoed, like a horrific double-face card, the preaching of love and the tender mercies. As the epigraph says, Auschwitz has always been open for business, despite its frozen smokestacks. Thank you so much for your deep thinking. It flatters me greatly. Reply
Susan Jarvis Bryant January 5, 2024 Michael, this powerful poem of heinous acts of horror, the reactions to it, and mention of the ravenous beast of evil still gnashing its teeth, is laced with linguistic beauty that sings beneath the terrifying message… an admirable accomplishment. The closing lines should be a grave warning to all those ignoring the shocking signs of impending doom today. “Agape is the muzzle of Auschwitz— again, as it ever has been.” is an image I can’t shake. Very well done, indeed! Reply
Michael Vanyukov January 5, 2024 Dear Susan, this is truly inspirational. It does wonders to my mood, which is actually poisoned by what’s going on at the universities and among the educated but ignorant youth. Your words reassure me that the words can be found that are capable of evoking the same emotions as I had when writing. Thank you very much indeed! Reply
Daniel Kemper January 6, 2024 This poem, much for topic matter and tone, but less for structure, shows a kinship with Celan’s “Death Fugue.” Both are transporting poems. Sorry for the pun. I just can’t believe what I’m witnessing at universities. Genocide? Of a poplulation that has steadily, rapidly climbed ever since Israel existed and is now at over five-million? Worst attempted genocide ever. And of course, the vile idiocy doesn’t stop there… We need more poetic reminders~ Thank you for this one. Reply
Michael Vanyukov January 6, 2024 Dear Daniel, thank you for the reference—in my ignorance, I’ve not read Celan before. For the Jews, the times bring another return of the flame of evil—from the burning Temple to 1190 York to auto-da-fe to German crematoria to Hamas gasoline. It’s all the same—in Kielce, Gaza City, Ramallah, or Boston MA. Pretexts may change, but the reasons do not. The “genocide” is as good as deicide—it is as true as any blood libel that has been invented to murder Jews. Reply
