Primo Levi translation of the Holocaust poem "Buna"A Poem by Michael R. BurchBuna Mangled feet, cursed earth, Another gray day like every other day awaits us. The terrible whistle shrilly announces dawn: Weary companion, I know you well. I see your dead eyes, my disconsolate friend. Colorless one, you once were a real man; But now, my invisible companion, you lack even a name. My once-strong man, now spent, Buna was the largest Auschwitz sub-camp, with around 40,000 foreigners “workers” who had been enslaved by the Nazis. Primo Levi called the Jews of Buna the “slaves of slaves” because the other slaves outranked them. Despite Buna’s immense size and four years of activity, according to Levi it never produced a kilo of its intended product: synthetic rubber. Levi described Buna as “desperately and essentially opaque and gray.” He said not a blade of grass grew within the compound because its soil had been impregnated with the “poisonous juices of coal and petroleum” so that nothing was alive but machines and slaves, with the former “more alive” than the latter. Levi also related hearing a Buna Kapo say that the only way Jews could leave Auschwitz was “through the Chimney” of the crematorium. It is possible that the companion being addressed in “Buna” is Primo Levi himself, recognizing what he had been reduced to. Keywords/Tags: Primo Levi, translation, Holocaust poem, Auschwitz, Buna, mud, chimney, smoke, crematorium, corpses, bodies, death, murder, starvation, gray, colorless, invisible, nameless, slave, slaves, slave labor, horror, hell © 2020 Michael R. Burch |
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Added on March 15, 2020 Last Updated on March 15, 2020 Tags: Primo Levi, translation, Holocaust poem, Auschwitz, Buna, mud, chimney, smoke, crematorium, corpses, bodies, death, murder, starvation, gray, colorless, invisible, nameless, slave, slaves, slave labor Author
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