Between the Shadows: New and Selected Works

By Herman Taube

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• Consult the annotated bibliography "Holocaust Poetry" »
• Listen to Herman Taube read some of his poetry online »

Theodor D. Adorno once remarked, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Nevertheless, a copious amount of literary activity has taken place in the years since the Holocaust, as writers struggle to communicate the incomprehensible. Survivors in particular have taken up this struggle, creating poetry to chronicle the stories of a decimated culture and people, to bear witness to a tragic and horrific period in modern history, to make the world remember. One of these poets is Herman Taube.

Orphaned as a small child and raised by a grandfather later killed in Lodz, Taube knew too well the cruelties of loss and death. As a soldier in the Polish Army during World War II, he witnessed and felt the fear, pain, and suffering of his fellow Jewish refugees. In this volume of new and selected works, Taube intersperses his World War II travels in Poland as a Red Cross medic with his journeys back to Poland many years later and the painful memories those visits evoked. Taube reminisces on the brutality of war and the lunacy of the men who instigate war. He aches over the loss of his family and friends, the places and dreams of his youth. In “My Girlfriend” he imagines a childhood girlfriend’s death while in the showers at Majdanek:

Entering the shower chamber
I imagined that you were there with me.
My lungs burst, I suffocated.

Taube also speaks of the survivors, including himself, and the aftermath of surviving - the nightmares, questions and doubts - and the dilemma between bearing witness to the past, or remaining silent to protect oneself against the memories. In “California Condors,” Taube compares Holocaust survivors to that rare and unusual bird:

We are an extinct, scarce tribe,
like the California Condor, few
of us are left in this world.
No one cares about our survival,
some would prefer if we vanish.

Taube goes on to describe with a mixture of awe and pride the whole span of Jewish life and experience. He writes of a sustainable Jewish faith alongside his own religious doubts, and he writes about Israel, his family, and the sublime simplicity of ordinary things. But he returns to the theme of the Holocaust to end the book, closing the volume with a memoriam to his friend, Brachale, who perished at Chelmno. This narrative, along with his opening poem, “Poland,” frames the collection, reminding the reader of the loss that, for a survivor, begins and ends all things.

261 pages
ISBN: 0-931848-72-5
Call no: PS 3570 .A86 B4 1986

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