Emotionally arresting and poignant…
In this beautifully composed narrative poem, Carreiro delves into the horrors unleashed by Nazi Germany, particularly Adolf Eichmann, a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust, while paying homage to those who fought for the Allies or took part in the Allies’ war effort against the Nazi Germany. Written in first-person perspective of a fictitious Mossad agent who took part in capturing Eichmann on 11 May 1960 in San Fernando, a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the poem delves into Eichmann’s personal life, including his marriage, three sons, a couple of mistresses along with his part in the holocaust, his escape from the Allies forces, and the eventual capture and execution. Eichmann was tasked with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. Declaring him a psychopath, the protagonist says: “Yet, he still remains Himmler and Heydrich’s monster;/ their master alchemist, a conjurer, a charmer,/ a spitting cobra in the guise of an associate speaking kindnesses,/ a soul eater, changing flesh into the dust of defeat,/ a moksha whose vision of nirvana ripples incessantly before them/ as a false Jerusalem is descending over their spirits;/ a modern Nero playing a violin while Berlin burns.” The poem poignantly peels back the layers, revealing mass killings and the unimaginable brutality under the Nazi ruling as well as bright flickers of courage and sacrifices made by the Greatest Generation in defeating this dreadful scourge of genocide. Ultimately, Eichmann’s execution serves as one of the unflinching victories against the erasure of the Holocaust: “In the end, I suppose recompense and revenge for such revulsion/ he helped cause in raising the goblin head of corruption,/ deutschland über alles,/ was bludgeoned back into the hell/ where they were spawned./ For the millions killed by such as the einsatzgruppen,/ his cities were firebombed and razed level,/ and even his fellow citizens‘ bodies/ were brought to the crematorium./ Odd, how Jew, Gentile and German/ look alike in their heaped stacks,/ all askew in the rigor mortis of finality; / democracy now showing at the end of mortality.” The black-and-white photographs and the end notes shed further light on Eichmann’s life and other facts, the workings of Mossad among others. The poem is slender but the history lessons here are awe-inspiring if distressing. A poignant, engrossing tale, focusing on both the courage and the evil that existed during the Holocaust.
Send Down the Master in Person
Reflections on Adolf Eichmann
A. Keith Carreiro
Pub date June 23, 2022
ASIN B0B5254RLV
Price $10.49 (USD) Kindle edition