By KLTV Newsdesk –

In anticipation of Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2025, marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Holocaust Centre North has announced the release of its first-ever poetry collection.

Titled Poetry After Auschwitz: Walking in West Cornwall with the Ghost of Great-Aunt Hilde, this collection by writer, historian, and educator Ben Barkow CBE offers an exploration of the Holocaust through the lens of his own family experiences.

A New Direction

Ben Barkow, who served as the Director of the Wiener Holocaust Library until 2019, is an established author with several books on Holocaust studies to his name.

However, this collection marks his debut in poetry. Inspired by the contrasting beauty of the Cornish landscape, Barkow began writing these poems over the past two and a half years from his home in Cornwall.

Family Legacy

Like many descendants of Holocaust survivors, Barkow grew up with little knowledge of his family’s past.

Following the deaths of his parents, he sought to piece together his family’s history, a challenging task given the lack of extensive correspondence and archival material.

Moving to Cornwall four years ago provided an unexpected breakthrough.

“In November 2021, after living here for around nine months, I woke one night with words and phrases running through my mind,” Barkow recalls.

“I got up, wrote for an hour, and knew immediately that I had found my way forward. What I had written was poetry.

“Over the next two and a half years, I composed around 30–35 poems, resulting in this collection.

“The form uniquely suited the exploration of my family’s fragmented history.

“Cornwall—with its rapidly changing weather, its constant proximity to the sea, and its landscapes shaped by human toil and suffering—became the ideal place to walk, think, and write.”

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Memory and History

Barkow’s poems aim to take readers on a journey through significant places tied to his family’s history: Berlin, his birthplace; Ramat Gan in Israel; Jerusalem; Neve Tsedek; New York; Orkney; and California.

From the serene landscapes of rural England to the horrors of the death camps, the collection raises profound questions about the universality of the Holocaust and the power of poetry to convey its weight.

Author Ben Barkow

Honouring Family Through Poetry

The collection introduces readers to key figures in Barkow’s family: his mother Friederike Barkow née Laubhardt, father Nick (Horst) Barkow, maternal grandparents Charlotte (Nanni) and Rudolf Laubhardt, paternal grandparents Charlotte (Lottchen) and Gustav Barkow, and Rudolf’s three sisters, Ilse Moos (and her husband Ludwig), Hilde Rosenthal Laubhardt (and her husband Friedrich (Fritz)), and Eva Laubhardt (Sister Placida).

Decades ago, Sister Placida entrusted Barkow with copies of letters she had written to her sister Lise Ilse in 1945–46, shortly after her release from the Ravensbrück and Malchow concentration camps.

She advised him, “Mach damit kein Mist”—a German phrase meaning “don’t make mischief” (or literally, manure) with them.

This poetry collection is a tribute to these individuals and a gesture of love for them.

Upon completing the collection, Barkow remarked, “I dare to hope she wouldn’t judge them as Mist.”

Artistic Engagement

Dr Alessandro Bucci, Director of Holocaust Centre North, commented: “When you begin engaging with the materials in an archive––and the Holocaust Centre North Archive is no exception––you encounter complexities and nuances that traditional historiography doesn’t always capture—complexities that are often difficult to express in words alone.

“Artistic responses to our collections help us push beyond the limits of language, creating a space for reflection and questioning.

“They encourage us to confront difficult questions about how we remember the legacies of the Holocaust, how its memory affects people across generations, and how that understanding is shared and to what end.

“I was delighted when Ben, a world-renowned Holocaust expert, approached us with his first poetry collection.

“There were so many synergies between our approaches, beliefs, and his powerful collection.”

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Publication Details

Poetry After Auschwitz: Walking in West Cornwall with the Ghost of Great-Aunt Hilde is set to be published on December 4 by Holocaust Centre North. It is available for pre-order here.

Ben Barkow’s book will be the first in a series of publications forthcoming from Holocaust Centre North’s Memorial Gestures programme, designed to fuse creative engagement with Holocaust education and legacy work.

This inaugural publication will be followed in Spring 2025 by further written works from Rey Conquer and Tom Hastings, the Centre’s first translator- and writer-in-residence.