Identification With the Jewish Victims

Identification With the Jewish Victims of Nazi Oppression

The Holocaust is, by far, the greatest atrocity that mankind had ever committed. The war crimes had been performed as a result of intense propaganda done by the German leaders of the time. The whole world is still in shock after the happenings and Jewish people still mourn their victims. Numerous writers have written on the subject in order to remind that the Holocaust did in fact happen and that it had millions of innocent victims. Sylvia Plath is one of those writers that has a subject related to the victims of the Nazi regime in her poem "Lady Lazarus."

There were rumors that the Nazi doctors had performed horrible experiments on the prisoners in order to bring innovations to the medial world. However, unlike normal doctors that provide assistance to sick people, the Nazi system had made ridiculously atrocious tests with the aim of creating the perfect Aryan race. In order to do that, they used perfectly healthy people presumed of being unhealthy due to the fact that they were belonging to another race, culture or had a different political conviction. Some of the rumors of Nazi experiments are clearly forged, but there are cases in which there is proof of the massacres, such as pictures and witness accounts.

It had been a nightmare to live as a prisoner in a Nazi camp, from many points-of-view. On of them was due to the fact that the detainees could have been selected for a medical experiment of for termination at any time. The Nazis were even reported of taking the skin of the dead bodies and using it as a souvenir in case of tattooed skin or for the building of various devices.

Sylvia Plath recounts of the case in which the Nazis had made lampshades from real human skin in the first verse of her poem. Initially, there is little information in the poem to prove that Plath did indeed use the rumors of Nazi lampshades made out of human skin as more than a mere figure of speech. However, if one pays more attention to the verses of the poem and to other figures of speech without any direct reference to the Holocaust, the fact that Plath wants the readers to comprehend the suffering of the Nazi prisoners becomes clearer.

From the title of the poem one can understand that the poem speaks about Lazarus, which stands for the symbol of resurrection. Across the poem, Plath further addresses to a women that dies but death is not important to her. She continues to resurrect regardless of the intensity of her aggressors' strikes. Apparently, with every death experienced by the woman, she only grows stronger, or, at least, her spirit becomes stronger and can support any kind of attack.

In the poem, Plath presents the magnificent human mind as being practically untouched by the pains of the body. To express feelings, Plath chooses very harsh metaphors and dark humor, which create a solemn, yet meaningful, depiction.

Plath might also relate to all the victims of oppression that have ever existed and that have resurrected from their own ashes like a Phoenix bird.

Plath refers to Lady Lazarus as being a victim of the Nazis and in the same time as being an image of herself. In spite of the horrible deaths of Jewish people, we are presented with a picture of proud human beings, for which death is insignificant, as they are much more than just vulnerable bodies.

One might believe that Plath might directly refer to a certain victim of the Holocaust or that she herself had gone through the Holocaust and has survived it so that she would now tell of the amazing courage the prisoners proved. She recounts of the matter, yet she proves that the sufferings and the pains, and the thought that death might be just a minute away did not affect her at that time. All of this had been made possible due to the fact that with every man, or every ten men or every million people killed by the Nazis, the prisoner community only grew stronger and more indifferent to the thought of dying.

A reason for why Plath chose to refer to the Holocaust in her poem would be that she considered the occurrence to be one of the worst acts of violence done by man. Thus she would relate to the Holocaust in her poem to present people with the passion of her feelings at the time.

Nevertheless, with all the brave people who stood strong when others would have run and hide, Plath shows that the Holocaust did indeed affect Jewish people everywhere. The scars of the Holocaust are still visible, according to Plath, with the woman in the poem still recalling, and being haunted by the disaster. The human capacity to remain strong in case of danger is similar to that of an animal, having the instinct to act and thus stay almost untouchable when regarding physical pain. The fact that the woman in the poem starts to hurt only after the danger is over demonstrates that along with the passing of a threat, humans start to realize the gravity of the situation.

Considering that Plath did indeed wrote the poem with reference to herself, at the time that she wrote it, she did not have a very good opinion about her physical appearance, as she tells about a skinny woman with bright-colored skin. Even with the fact that she did not consider herself to being perfect, she had been certain that her mind had been perfectly clear, as a result of winning the fight with herself after the several attempts of suicide which she had in her real life. Plath metaphorically mentions her suicide attempts in the poem but, according to her, the failed tries of taking her own life had motivated her to move on, eventually.

The poem tells about an event which happened to the main character, presumably Plath, at the age of ten. Later in her life, as the poem further tells, the sad event had happened once more, but it would seem that this time Plath had actually wished for it to happen. Most probably, the writer referred to her unsuccessful suicide attempts. Practice does the best performance, as readers can observe that she grew stronger and keener on succeeding after she first tried to commit suicide. Actually it would seem that the second time that she wished for her life to end, she wanted to commit the perfect suicide, certain that she could have transformed death into an art.