At The End Of The War by DeWitt Clinton

At The End Of The War

by DeWitt Clinton

© 2018 DeWitt Clinton

Kelsay Books

Aldrich Press

ISBN 978-1—947465-92-3

Softbound, 111 pages, No Price Given

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

The Holocaust is 80 years in the past and survivors have decreased in large numbers. But deniers of that terrible period have increasingly  spread their message  to countries throughout the world.

In this toxic atmosphere DeWitt Clinton’s poem, “Touring the Holocaust” is more than a reminder; it is a tribute to the past and those who died.

Following are excerpts from this poem “Opening Day, The United States Holocaust Museum.” While the poem is five plus pages long, I present excerpts depicting the prejudice and bigotry unleashed against the Jews.

We cannot move any further

unless we step

into a care

a brown cattle car

swept incredibly clean

where all of us must

unload nothing bad will happen

to us here

though we cannot stay

too long in the car

that would bring the guards

everyone believes

we will be safe

it isn’t as if

we are really there.

And the people on the tour years later see what the camp was like. The truth may frighten. The truth may reveal. Those in the present do not die like those who died in the death camps.

What is it like for a town and its people to be wiped off the face of the earth? Clinton captures this tragedy of the many small shtetls which existed, in some cases for hundreds of years, before being exterminated by the German soldiers and their accomplices.

Dazed, disoriented, we step

into a shtetl sky high

a room of old photos

of everyone who ever

lived in that place

this fire place high as a smokestack

those at the very top

lift first into ash.

Finally we approach

the crematorium

a model of long courteous lines

little people with

little faces

guards and shepherds

keeping everyone

civil, in line.

We watch them go inside

watch them undress

the inappropriateness

of men and women

long beards

pubic hair

a wildness beyond even G-d

Clinton has brought readers through the Holocaust Museum to the reality of the actual brutality as it was perpetrated in the 1930s and 1940s. His poems portray what the Jews experienced. He shows a sensitivity to biblical literature as well as Judaism. Each poem reveals the horror of the war as well as the cruelty and viciousness of the Nazis.

“Reading the Tao at Auschwitz” is a 28 part sequence which begins thus:

I

In the beginning we saw Nothing

From Nothing came Something

Something made All of us

Turn into ash only to

Float onto those just Arrived

or on farmers, nearby,

Turning us into Soil and Food

The irony of death, of ashes of humans becoming food is not missed either by Clinton or his readers. How Nothing becomes Something is the tragedy – of which there are many -- of World War II and the Holocaust.

The third part portrays another tragedy, the treating of humans like cows or sheep led to slaughter:

III

Imagine, go ahead imagine

Undressing a place

Where signs direct

Everyone to Remember your number

To be efficient, your number is used again

In Part X the helplessness of the Jews is laid out in twenty-three lines. Many of the things Jewish prisoners needed are listed-- food and help the most prominent.

X

The way never acts yet nothing is left undone.

--I, xxxvii

We needed soup

We needed clothes

We needed penicillin

We needed cots

We needed mothers

We needed water

We needed more soup

We needed flannels

We needed air

We needed guns

We needed prayer

We needed Benji

We needed Marla

We needed all we ever knew

We needed law

We needed time

We needed home

We needed stew

We needed health

We needed Moses

We needed bombs

We needed meals

We needed You

Clinton’s book is a masterpiece of understanding and presenting the Holocaust in real terms.  He refutes the deniers for their anti-Semitic beliefs and their nefarious political purposes.

As Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, I am hoping that he taught his students about the Holocaust during his long career and that they have retained his lessons and passed them forward. That is what keeps the truth ahead of the deniers.

At The End Of The War is a book of poetry to be read by everyone.

______________________________________

Zvi A. Sesling

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review

Author, War Zones (Nixes Mate Books)

Author, The Lynching of Leo Frank (Big Table Publishing)