What do you think Dan Pagis is saying in his first poem, “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car?”

1. How did the experience of being “underground” differ from the accounts of internment in concentration camps? How were they similar? Jalowicz-Simon’s account and Felice Schragenheim’s both feature the role sex and romantic attachment played in their survival. For one it was a sacrifice, and for the other a refuge. How do their experiences expand our understanding of what it means to be a “victim” of the Holocaust?

2. What do you think Dan Pagis is saying in his first poem, “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car?” How do readers know this is a poem about the Holocaust? Why do you think he chose to place biblical figures in the scene? (It may help to read Genesis 4 for context). What does the poem mean to you?

3. Elie Wiesel writes that though he lived through the Holocaust, even he cannot understand the decisions victims made– why they acted in certain ways and not others. He concludes by writing, “I do not know why, but I forbid us to ask the question.” Do you agree with Wiesel that the question of victim’s action or inaction is the wrong question? Why, or why not? Why do you think people keep asking, “why did the Jews in the camps not choose a death with honour, knife in hand and hate on their lips?”