HCSHR 2:7: Toni Piccini, Auschwitz: e simili

Toni Piccini, Auschwitz: e simili. Winchester VA: Red Moon Press, 2018. ISBN: 978-1-947271-21-0. 110 pages. 20$US redmoonpress.com

Review by Stanford M. Forrester/sekiro

In the twenty-plus years I have been active in the haiku community I have never written a book review until now. Piccini’s Auschwitz has stayed with me every day since  I first read it 6 months ago*. It is more than that kind of book.  Auschwitz consists of 85 poems written in Italian by Toni Piccini and then translated into English, Hebrew, and German, by Jim Kacian, Zinovy Vayman, and Dietmar Tauchner.

Piccini writes: “Visiting Auschwitz at eleven was a milestone in my life, and over the years my interest in the subject  has deepened” Towards the end of his introduction he elaborates by  saying: “There are images born of the pen (a testament on the snow of an echo, the shadow of mothers…) as well as others connected to historically documented realities.

Here are some of Picinni’s standout poems:

treno merci —
un topo nell'angolo
l'unico sopravvissuto

freight train —
a mouse in the corner
the only survivor

**

"Prima le donne e i bambini"
diritta la strada
per le camere a gas

“Women and Children First” —
straight the road
to the gas chambers

**

sotto la pelle
tatuato il nulla
tranne numeri

beneath the skin —
a tattoo of nothing
but numbers

As we can see,  Piccini leaves no buffer to protect the reader from the horrors of the camp.

per sempre
guancia a guancia
la fossa comune

forever
cheek to cheek —
the common pit

But here it can be argued, that a tiny hint of optimism is present, as the corpses are touching “cheek to cheek” and that there is a bond between the victims that can never be taken away.

Although, Piccini himself was not a Holocaust survivor, I can not help, but be amazed by the depth of his vision. His ability to bring to attention so little that most people would have missed in absolutely uncanny.  I believe this haiku is a perfect example:

macchie d'erba
sui loro denti —
fame sena scampo

grass stains
on their teeth —
unrelenting hunger

To me the use of “grass” as a season word, will never be the same again.

In looking at the book, just about every single poem is chilling and has the ability to lead the reader through a terrifying territory that I’m not sure has ever been traveled  through in haiku.  There is no nastaliga here, nor a morbid sense of grutuity. Just the shocking sense of reality from what one group of people can do to another.

Like a good poem, that begins on the paper and ends off the page, Piccini’s book surprisingly does not end with the liberation of the Jews from Auschwitz. He leaves us in a place that is not filled with light of the liberation of the camp, but perhaps more realistically in a gray area that will linger to haunt for decades.

suicida . .
cancellando il senso di colpa
per essere sopravvissuto

suicide . . .
erasing the sense of guilt
of having survived

Review by Stanford M. Forrester/sekiro

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* This review was written in February, 2019. It is posted May 1-2nd, 2019, Yom Hashoah.