Holocaust

Reznikoff's subject is one people's suffering at the hands of another. His source materials are the U.S. government's record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. None of the words here are Reznikoff's own: instead he has created, through selection and arrangement of the courtroom testimony, a poem that unfolds in the voices the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets the terrible history lay itself bare in history's own tongue. The facts of the Holocaust, says the critic David Lehman, "contradict the very faculty of understanding." Reznikoff's technique, akin to a lawyer's relentless rehearsing of the bare facts, serves his subject well. The poet does not interpret or explain. He does not philosophize or editorialize. "He lets reality speak for itself," says Lehman, "lets it state the externals of the thing or event, and leaves unspoken the emotions, which the reader may be counted on to provide for himself". Few readers will forget the emotions they bring to this newly reset edition of Reznikoff's masterpiece.