Jessica Donnachie

The Holocaust in Sylvia Plaths Poems: “Chuffing me off like a Jew”
Sylvia Plath wrote many poems, many of them about death and alluding to her suicide although some poems were about marriage, specifically hers. She often referred to the Holocaust to represent death and many angry feelings she had towards her father, her husband and other men. In “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy” images from the Holocaust criticize her father and other men, show she feels like a Jew and allude to her death.
Plath had much anger towards her father because she felt like he could have prevented his death when she was a child and she felt betrayed by him. She also had anger towards other men because of their opinion of women and how they treated them. Sylvia shows this in a line in Lady Lazarus, “And I eat men like air”, which suggests that she has a strong dislike for men, but she does not specifically criticize her father like she does in “Daddy” (“Lady Lazarus” 84). “Daddy” is more directly criticizing her father through references to the Holocaust and other things. “I thought every German was you”, shows that Plath considered her father to be somewhat like a German, and she as a Jew, because she felt betrayed by him, much like Jews did in the Holocaust (“Daddy”29). Later in the poem, there is a direct connection to Hitler when she says “A man in black with a Meinkampf look” to represent what her father looks like in her eyes (“Daddy”65). Plath ends the poem with “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through” which we can see that she is finally giving up on her father and doesn’t want to think of him anymore (“Daddy” 80). By using these references to the Holocaust we can see the anger that she feels towards her father and how he makes her feel like a Jew.
Plath also states she feels much like a Jew, partly because of her father and others who make her feels this way. “A sort of walking miracle, my skin/ Bright as a Nazi lampshade” connects to the Holocaust because it was said that the skin of Jews was used to make lampshades for the Nazi’s (”Lady Lazarus” 5-6). Plath then makes a reference to the story of Lazarus when she writes “My face a featureless, fine Jew linen” which refers to when Lazarus was being taken out of the ground and the linen was taken off of him (“Lady Lazarus” 8-9). In “Daddy” there is almost an entire stanza referring to the Holocaust “Chuffing me off like a Jew./ A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen./ I began to talk like a Jews./ I think I may well be a Jew.” (“Daddy” 32-35). These lines connect to the concentration camps that were used for the Jews in the Holocaust and how the Nazi’s mistreated them. Plath shows that she feels as if she is a Jew because she is being mistreated and has been betrayed by her father and her husband, the two most important men in her life. Plath felt like a Jew and expressed these thoughts in her poems and also connected her upcoming death to the Holocaust.
There are many times that Plath alludes to her death in “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy” by making connections with the death during the Holocaust. “This is Number Three./ What a trash/ To annihilate each decade” alludes to her third and final attempt at suicide and by using the word “annihilate” it is a strong word that is typically used to describe a much more massive death, such as the Holocaust (“Lady Lazarus” 22-24). The Holocaust was very painful for the Jews because of the concentration camps, and how they died so Sylvia writes “I do it so it feels like hell” (“Lady Lazarus” 46). She is referring to her death feeling like hell but the deaths of Jews also felt like hell and she has considered herself to be a Jew. Once again in “Daddy” we can look at the line “A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.” and make the connection that Auschwitz specifically was also a death camp and Jews were sent there to be killed much like Plath was on her way to death also (“Daddy” 33)
These two poems really show how Sylvia feels about her father specifically and her thoughts about her death and how both of these connect to the events that took place during the Holocaust.