Go to Treblinka Commentary

In the poem ‘Go to Treblinka’ Halina Birenbaum writes about the horrific nature of the World War II death camp, Treblinka. This commentary will look at the poem as a whole and how the writer uses specific techniques and tone to create feelings of sorrow and mourning.

Birenbaum uses anaphora, the words “Go to Treblinka” become a refrain through the course of the poem and is used eight times. The imperative nature of the refrain is emphasized by the word ‘Go.’ The word is also an action verb giving the poem a feeling of necessity. The stanzas in the poem are also quite disorderly and creates a feeling of chaos representing the chaos of war. The stanzas also use enjambment to capture the attention of the reader. The poem also focuses on involving the reader by saying “listening” and “them.”

The first stanza opens with the poems refrain, ‘Go to Treblinka,’ the use of the word ‘go’ urges the reader to do this. However as the reader is physically incapable of doing this the poet instead uses the senses to take the reader to Treblinka. “Keep your eyes wide open/Sharpen your hearing” alerts the reader, asking the reader to increase their senses so that they can even see or hear the death of the people. The poet writes “listen to the voices which emerge from every grain of that earth” suggesting the mass of death that occurred at Treblinka. The reference to ‘every grain’ emphasizes the idea of mass death as there are millions of grains.

The second stanza again begins with the refrain ‘Go to Treblinka.’ At the beginning of the stanza there is a repetition of the word ‘they.’ The word refers to a collective and can imply the loss of identity of the people as they were murdered in masses. The idea that after death the masses of people have been trapped in Treblinka for an eternity is conveyed. After having their lives unjustly taken away