Paul Celan was a survivor of the Holocaust, and he wrote ‘Death Fugue’ to comprehend and convey the enormity of suffering in the concentration camps. He constantly repeats words and images to show that many people died one after another. After the Holocaust, people around the world started asking how they should remember the experience. Celan used his poetry to express these emotions. He wrote this poem in the style of a fugue, a kind of music that was used by famous German composers. This music is used to express the cruel reality of death camps, creating a strong contrast.
The poem talks about the racist ideas that the Nazis believed. Celan shows this by using the names Margaret and Shulamit. Margaret, with golden hair, stands for the so-called Aryan ideal (the perfect German). Shulamit, with ashen gray hair, stands for Jewish people who were treated cruelly. The camp officer and death are described as having ‘blue eyes,’ which reminds us of the Nazi idea of a ‘perfect German look’.
The Holocaust is a painful event in human history, where about 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime during World War II, led by Adolf Hitler in Germany. The Nazis believed in a racist idea called the ‘Aryan master race,’ and they saw Jews, along with other groups, as inferior. At first, Jews were discriminated against, removed from jobs, schools, and public life. Later, they were sent to closed parts of cities called ghettos, and then to concentration and death camps like Auschwitz, where they were forced to work, starved, tortured, and killed—many in gas chambers.
Paul Celan was born into a Jewish family. When the Nazis took control of his area, his life changed forever. Celan and others were put into ghettos and forced to do labor work. Both Celan’s parents were taken away by the Nazis. His father died of typhus in a camp, and his mother was shot in the head by a soldier. These tragic events left a deep wound in Celan’s heart. After the war, he survived, but he carried the pain and trauma with him forever.
In reality, in Nazi camps, some prisoners were forced to join orchestras and play music for the guards. This disturbing use of music is part of what Death Fugue talks about. The Holocaust created a strange and painful relationship between music and musicians. Even in the camps, music was present.