Observation Camp Near Jaslo Analysis

This essay will be exploring the theme of war through the use of language in Szymborska’s poetry with the focus of “still” and “Starvation camp near Jaslo”. In many of her poems, Szymborska includes themes of war and destruction and the effect it had on both the Jewish and the Polish people. She talks about war in a negative way, giving her own opinion and often comparing it to modern times in an ironic statement. Her main focus of the two poems is the dehumanization of the Jewish people when Germany invaded Poland during the second world war, utilizing various techniques to describe the hardships that they had to go through in that time period. Having lived through two of the major wars in Poland (World war two and the cold war), she can describe the events vividly and succeeds in making the

Its main focus is the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the concentration camp near the city of Jaslo. This has personal significance to Szymborska as that was close to where she was living at the time. The poem begins with “write it down. Write it” . The repetition of the words “Write it” gives urgency to the matter. It is as if Szymborska is ordering the reader to write it down so the story is not forgotten. This is then followed by “With ordinary ink on ordinary paper” , which highlights the fact that the concentration camps were common during the war. Szymborska chooses to focus on the nearest one to where she was living at the time. The sentence ensures that the reader is aware of the seriousness of what happened during that time period. She could also be a reference to the lack of resources during the war and a lot of basic goods were extremely expensive. Szymborska could be trying to give the millions of people who suffered a voice by writing about what they had to go through and to prevent an event like this from happening again in