Reflections on Anti-Semitism from Two Different Hearts

Reflections on Anti-Semitism from Two Different Hearts

Greg Lukis

Anti-Semitism, irrational Jew-hatred, after ebbing and flowing here and there throughout human history, heaped all its energies upon the European continent in the 1940s and exploded into its most nauseating exhibition ever. It is in this very context of what we now call the Holocaust that two Gentile writers chose to identify themselves with the persecuted race. In her poem “Daddy,” Sylvia Plath announces: “I think I may well be a Jew” (line 35). At the same time, Yevgeny Yevtushencko, in his poem “Babii Yar,” mirrors those words exactly: “Now I seem to be / a Jew” (lines 6-7). Both of these poets were born in the early 1930s and both of these poems were written in the early 1960s, and although these quoted lines are nearly identical, similarities disappear when one examines the motives behind each writer. They are diverse. The scope and sincerity of their respective alliances with the Jews are in contrast to each other: Sylvia Plath is self-serving, while Yevgeny Yevtushencko is philanthropic.

Plath’s poem was written with bitterness in her heart. The bitterness was toward her father who died at least twenty years earlier. Her father, in his daughter’s mind, was a Nazi. We don’t know what he did to her in the first eight years of her life before he died, but she insists: “I have always been scared of you” (41). Prompted by this fear, she evoked the Nazi/Jew analogy to describe the father/daughter relationship. He was a devilish Nazi fighting the war; he was in the air force, the Luftwaffe, and he was a panzer-man in the army. To her, he must have even been Adolf Hitler, for she references his neat mustache and Meinkampf look. She, on the other hand, was a ravaged Jew. When she created this association, therefore, she was not sympathizing with them, but pitying her own self.

Yevtushencko has a bigger heart. He identified with the Jews because of the injustice done, not to himself but to the Jewish people. He is sympathetic toward them and his concern in this poem is centered on the massacre at a ravine in Kiev known as Babi Yar. Here 33,771 Jews were gunned down and buried in just two days during World War II. Yevtushencko is a Russian and Russia is notorious for its anti-Semitism. Therefore, he was not making many friends by lamenting that there was no monument erected at this place to commemorate the exterminated Jews. In fact he declared near the end of his poem: “all anti-Semites / must hate me now as a Jew” (89-90). His motives were not self-serving; they were, in fact, the opposite.

Plath identified with the Jews, but in a very impersonal manner. The Jews she associated herself with were nameless. They were on trains heading off “to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen” (33). It is the common image of Jews packed into sealed boxcars being transported to the infamous death camps. We see no faces, no Jews in particular. They could be anyone from anywhere. She knew not one of them, nor are we given any reason to believe she cared to learn any of their names.

Yevtushencko, on the other hand, identified with individuals: “I seem to be / Anne Frank” (43-44), he wrote, uniting with the frail, young girl from Holland whom the Nazis killed. He named Alfred Dreyfus as well, a victim of anti-Semitism in the late 1800s. He proceeded to bond with the Jews in ancient Egypt where they were slaves. He agonized with the Jew who was crucified at Calvary. Then in his own country he became involved in a pogrom, not as a Russian, but as a victim Jew. Finally, he feels as though he is every individual who was buried at Babi Yar. Through all this he shows that he was not just using the imagery of the Holocaust, as many do to advance their own agendas, but he was genuinely connecting with the Jewish people in a broader and more meaningful manner.

When both of these authors picked up their pens to write, each of them had an enemy in mind. Yevtushencko’s enemy was Russian anti-Semitism; Plath’s enemy was her father. Yevtushencko’s cause, therefore, is simply a nobler one, and more mature. Sylvia Plath would have killed her father had he not died before she had the chance. She was stewing with hatred for him, in the final line of the poem. Yevtushencko takes the higher ground. Whereas he named names among those he honored, he doesn’t seem to hate any individuals. He hates the disease which has ravaged his country, that plague which never seems to go away. There is no logic behind anti-Semitism. Notwithstanding, it has wormed its way into every country on the globe. Yevtushencko is appalled by its presence in Russia where it is so thick that it took much courage for him to even publish this poem. Yevtushencko is selfless and courageous. Plath is self-centered and needy.

If one could weigh the level of sincerity and commitment with which these two poets aligned themselves with the Jewish people, the scale would be heavily tilted on Yevtushencko’s side. One gets the impression he is writing about a lifelong ideal which he holds. This is apparent throughout the poem but especially in this line: “Nothing in me / shall ever forget!” (82-83). It is the same theme the Jews themselves still publish today regarding the Holocaust: Never forget. Yevtushencko is passionate. Plath is also passionate, but her crusade is for herself, and if she ever were to get over the pain caused by her father and her father’s death, she would no longer have any reason to think of herself as a Jew.

No single group or race of people have been persecuted as consistently and for so long as have the Jews. Yevgeny Yevtushencko took up their cause in a place and time when it was an unpopular thing to do. He wrote his poem “Babii Yar,” because the Jewish victims were on his heart, and he stood up to confront the great enemy anti-Semitism.