A powerful series of meditations on the Nazi atrocities against the Jews, told by an American whose two uncles fought for Germany in World War II.

Praise for William Heyen's earlier Holocaust poetry: "The most powerful book I have read this year is William Heyen's The Swastika Poems. I know no other book so firmly integrated. Sober and chilling, songs in shadowed measures, each leading forward into intenser realizations, darker clarities, these poems will invade your dreams"--Hayden Carruth. "As 20th-century poetry that is nakedly quintessential, William Heyen's Erika poems are unmatched. For it is a staggering paradox that the poetry of the Holocaust is best written by non-Jews. Written by Jews the poems of the Holocaust add to the literature of lamentation, the basic literature of the Old Testament. No matter how hauntingly great such works may be they cannot escape self-identification and the voice of the dirge. But to treat the Holocaust in a larger context, to throw light on the poetry of the victim one must be otherwise than the victim. I doubt if they can be equaled"--Karl Shapiro.