Night Over Birkenau Annotations Flashcards
Whole poem:
Night again. Again the grim sky closes
circling like a vulture over the dead silence.
Like a crouching beast over the camp
the moon sets, pale as a corpse.
And like a shield abandoned in battle, blue Orion- lost among the stars.
The transports grown in darkness and the eyes of the crematorium blaze.
It’s steamy, stifling. Sleep is a stone.
Breath rattles in my throat.
This lead foot crushing my chest
is the silence of three million dead.
Night, night without end. No dawn comes.
My eyes are poisoned from sleep.
Like God’s judgement in the corpse of the earth,
fog descends over Birkenau.
Stanza 1, Quotation 1:
“Night again. Again”
-Connotations of darkness.
-Links to title.
-Creates a sinister atmosphere.
-Abrupt and short opening sentence.
-Repetition emphasises that something is being repeated in the camp.
Stanza 1, Quotation 2:
“Grim sky”
-Sky is severe and a sense of foreboding is created.
-Connotations of the “Grim Reaper”- a traditional figure who represents death- the one who decides when it is our turn to die.
-This suggests how powerless the prisoners are when it comes to their own demise- it is almost inevitable.
-Therefore, even the sky over this place seems to be merciless and sinister.
Stanza 2, Quotation 1:
“And like a shield abandoned in battle, blue Orion- lost among the stars.”
-Darkness makes it difficult to see Orion, the constellation of stars known as “The Hunter”.
-This is because the sky is not clear- this may be because of the fog but perhaps the poet may be implying the dust from the incinerators used to burn bodies at camp was blocking out the light from the stars.
-Poet is suggesting Orion has been killed and is lying amongst a heap of dead bodies. The idea that the prisoners are alone without a saviour is also alluded to here.
-The burning of bodies created lots of grey dust in the atmosphere around the camp.
Stanza 3, Quotation 1:
“Sleep is a stone.”
-Connotates a weight/heaviness.
-Suggested that sleep offers no relief or escape but instead offers a period of silence.
-Suggests that sleep causes emotional pain from reflecting on their experience at the camp.
Stanza 3, Quotation 2:
“This lead foot crushing my chest”
-He feels he is carrying the burden of the suffering of the “three million dead.”
-He is fully aware of the slaughter on a mass scale at the hands of the Nazis, since the “lead foot” refers not just to the dead but also to the oppressors who have caused all of this suffering.
-However, this “crushing” could also be suggesting the guilt (survivors’ guilt) that Borowski feels for still being alive when so many million are dead- there must have been a sense of guilt for those who survived, partly because of what it took to survive in the camp.
Stanza 4, Quotation 1:
“Night, night without end.”
-Repetition of “night” which parallels to poem’s opening lines.
-It is an effective conclusion as the poem comes full circle, just like the days and nights Borowski experiences.
-This repetition helps to emphasise the endless nature of night and the suffering contained within it.
Themes:
Death
Personal Experience
Loneliness and Isolation
War
Abuse of Power
Synonyms of introduces:
Familiarises, establishes, presents, illustrates, emphasises, highlights
