Poems of Resistance during the Holocaust
Women Against Tyranny: Poems of Resistance during the Holocaust offers poetry that pays tribute to heroic women.
The poems and narratives in Davi Walders’s Women Against Tyranny make significant contributions to the fields of poetry, as well as Holocaust literature, women’s studies, and World War II history,
They pay tribute to the courage and compassion of Jewish and non-Jewish women who resisted, such as Dr. Rita Levi-Monatalcini, Sophie Scholl, Cory Ten Boom, Zivia Lubetkin, Emilie Schindler, Magda Trocme, Liselotte Pilku, and many others. The poetry documents women’s bravery in the face of great danger. This is a unique collection of poems and narratives that opens new avenues of representation for teaching Holocaust literature. Here is one of the poems from the 2018 book:
______
The Practice of
Dr. Adelaide Hautval
Try to imagine her
a Gentile among Jews
a doctor among the sick
a prisoner rounded up
in France trying to get home
for her mother’s funeral,
an accidental arrest
plunging her into the cold
eye of evil, protesting
every step of the way
Bourges prison
arguing with the guards,
cursing each cruelty,
the cattle car
stitching “Friend of the Jews”
on her coat,
the Birkenau barracks
nursing the sick, hiding
those dying from typhus
Block 10
refusing to practice
Nazi ‘gynecology’—refusing
to inject, irradiate,
sterilize, maim, disfigure—
Try to imagine her
surviving Auschwitz and
Ravensbrück
to testify
that it was possible
to behave humanely
Try to imagine her—
Adelaide Hautval—a doctor
with a practice
in refusal.
For more information, please see: http://www.daviwalders.com/index.html.