Poem 238 - Riddle

This disturbing poem explores who exactly should feel the guilt for the killing of the Jews during the Holocaust. Many people of the time try to act as if they had nothing to do with it yet in reality they all played a part in allowing this genocide to occur. The whole poem, with the exception of stanzas five and six, follows a rhyme scheme in which the last word of the second and fourth line rhymes. This structure not only adds to the flow of the poem itself but also helps to create the sense that stanzas five and six are streams of thought. They do not follow the structure because the speaker is rushing to suggest what everyone was doing but how no one wants to admit that they played a part in the killing of the Jews. The speaker of this poem is also important to look at because he is an outsider looking in on the matter - he is just searching for answers. Had it been someone else, suppose a Jew themself or a Nazi officer, the poem would have been slanted, perhaps incorporating their own prejudices and anger into the poem and subtracting from its effectiveness.

Repetition is a huge essential part of this poem. Not only does Heyen reinstate the question, "Who killed the Jews" several times representing a desparate cry for a specific answer but there are other elements in which he repeats. In the first stanza he repeats "From" which signifies the numerous amounts of places in which they were destroying Jews. The second stanza he repeats "Not I, cries" in an accurate way to inform the reader that no one wants to take credit even though "the typist" probably type the death certificates, "the engineer" provided the transportation for the Jews to their extermination, and Eichmann and Speer obviously played hands on roles in the concentration camps. Then there is the repetition of the word "some" and "some men" representing what everyone was doing in playing a part in the extermination but still none of whom own up to actually killing the Jews. Another device that plays a major role in this poem is the rhetorical questions, especially "Who killed the Jews?". All the questions he poses in reality we know the answer to. Everyone is potentially responsible for allowing the Jews to die if they failed to do anything about it. Yet, stating the questions help reinforce the idea that no one is going to face these questions and admit the answers because they are ashamed.

All in all, I found this poem to be effective in that it forces the audience to think about their own actions. It also forces people to realize that they need to speak up and recognize how their actions, or lack thereof, do effect other people whether they want them to or not. Although the poem is gruesome and highly depressing, Heyen crafts it together in an innocent way. He is just searching for answers - for someone to come forward and admit they played a part. Sarcastically he reaches his audience by acting like he does not know the answers, and effectively he shows them how their neglectful actions did in fact make them murderers, too.