Memory of the Holocaust in Henryk Grynberg’s volume of poetry "Dowód osobisty" [Personal ID]

Abstract

Virtually all of Henryk Grynberg’s work is devoted to the subject of the Holocaust. In the 2006 volume entitled Dowód osobisty, individual poems require not only knowledge of the Shoah but also of the author’s biography and other work. In many, the lyrical subject is endowed withthe poet’s own characteristics. Another modality of presenting the world - one seldom employedin poetry - is through the utterance of a collective subject (the lyrical “us”, which may be identified with the Jewish nation), in which the focus shift from the personal, individual experience to a more general and objective scope. Also, numerous poems feature indirect allusions to Grynberg’s earlier work. Hence, their interpretation is contingent on the reader’s literary experience.