The Figure of Extermination. On Józef Czechowicz's Śmierć [Death]

Abstract

figure of Extermination emerging from Czechowicz's poem. Cows crowded in a cattle-truck going to slaughterhouse predict a certain type of image, and at the same time a verbal formula, that are one of the key forms of recording the experience of Holocaust. However, there are significant differences between Czechowicz's presaged figure and the fulfilled one, present in the documents of Extermination and the literature of Holocaust. The image created by the poet has a character of a vision and not of a comparison. In the poem śmierć the cattle is anthropomorphised, the cows are like people. In the texts concerning the Holocaust people are degraded, they are like cattle driven to slaughter. In Czechowicz's poem there is also no ambivalence characteristic of the fully shaped figure of Extermination.