Transcript

by Heimrad Bäcker, Patrick Greaney (Translator), Vincent Kling (Translator)

"transcript" is a disturbing document. Using the techniques of concrete and visual poetry, Heimrad B?cker presents quotations from the Holocaust's planners, perpetrators, and victims. The book offers a startling collection of documents that confront us with details from the bureaucratic world of the Nazis and the intimate worlds they destroyed. B?cker's sources range from victims' letters and medical charts to train schedules and the telephone records of Auschwitz. His transcriptions and reworkings of these sources serve as a reminder that everything about the Shoah was spoken about in great detail, from the most banal to the most monstrous. "transcript" shows us that the Holocaust was not "unspeakable," but was an eminently describable and described act spoken about by thousands of people concerned with the precision and even the beauty of their language.

Genres: Poetry, German Literature

153 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find it difficult at the best of times to come up with any sort of review of a book - especially the good ones

Let's just say that Backer has taken the raw material of reams of documentation and archival material relating to the Nazi Final Solution and conjured up a kind of concrete poem of the harrowing details.

[Otto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Erschütternd, was Bäcker hier durch Zitate aus der NS-Zeit über die Unmenschlichkeiten darstellt. Gemeinheiten, Grausamkeiten, und alles unter dem Mantel der bürokratisch-juristischen Kälte und pseudowissenschaftlicher Forschung, bei der Menschen Versuchsobjekte werden.
Alles Fakten, die bekannt sind, aber durch Bäckers kommentarlose Aneinanderreihung, bewusste Zusammenstellung unter die Haut gehen

[Courtney Ferriter · Rating 5 out of 5]

** 5 stars **

This volume took my breath away with its intensity. It should be read by everyone.

Bäcker assembles quotations from the Holocaust, creating a partial transcript (hence the title) of what occurred. Included are quotations from SS/Nazi documents, the diaries and testimonies of the perpetrators, and letters and testimony of witnesses and victims. Each page of this volume is connected to a source, which is listed in a bibliography at the end. As noted in the afterword to the volume, "at every stage, the reader is aware that there is something else to read and something more to learn. The Shoah is transformed from something that readers thought they already understood into something that they have yet to grasp" (151-152).

[Dane Cobain · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is basically found poetry that’s based on some of the documents that the Nazis created and stored during the holocaust. It’s made all the more poignant by the fact that the author was a member of the Hitler Youth, although I can only assume from the message here that he regrets it.

Overall, I love stuff like this, even though I know that it’s kind of dark and morbid. I think it’s a great example of how much power words can have and I think that Backer’s created an important document here. I’m just glad that I heard about it through some BookTube friends and thought to give it a look.

Would I recommend it? I mean, not if you don’t like dark subjects or poetry. Otherwise, absolutely, hell yeah, and of course. I’m even going to keep this for my permanent collection.

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Backer confronts the Holcaust through its own terms and in its own language. Using documentary sources, his "methodical gibberish" replicates the Nazis' deadly gibberish. This is a work to which others operating in the documentary vein might aspire.

[Debra]

A "document" that uses "the techniques of concrete and visual poetry" to present "quotations from the Holocaust's planners, perpetrators, and victims." The notes and bibliography are very helpful. Not something to which I could ever assign a star rating (!) Read it twice in one evening, and I'm sure I will read it again, and share it with others. Makes me think of the Hannah Arendt phrase "the banality of evil" as the bureaucratic and often euphemistic language of genocide is on display here for all to see. Thanks to Marc Nash of Booktube for the recommendation.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this text, the use of concrete poetry coupled with images created through repetition and omission shows the bleak and devastating reality of the Holocaust. Through linking pages to an index which are then linked to a bibliography, it shows that though the actions of the Third Reich are speakable, the information is endless.

[İlker Şaguj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Türkçeye Tutanak adıyla çevrildi, yeni baskısı Dünyadan Çıkış Yayınları'ndan yapıldı. Bir acıyı, toplumsal bir olayı üzerine yazarak anlatmak yerine doğrudan belgelerle tanık gösterilmesinin daha etkili olacağı fikriyle şairin hazırladığı bu kitap Nazi belgelerini, kayıtlarını, gazetelerini, mektupları, notları didik didik ederek hazırlanmış, somut şiirin en önemli örneklerinden biri.

[Holly Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this on the train after seeing a sobering and disheartening talk on conceptualism, without realizing that, yeah, I was going to be reading two found poetry books about the fucking Holocaust in one night. I think I woke up hungover JUST ON BAD FEELINGS.

[Rosamund · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is challenging to write about this book. Bäcker takes his words from reports, lists, court transcripts, regulations. The fragments he uses, the order in which he places them, the space around them, is what makes this poetry. The impact is devastating.

[Curt Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

We have all seen photographs of lynchings of black men (and can’t un-see them). But maybe the ugliest representation of American racism is in the form of a child’s innocent-sounding rhyme:
Eeny, meeny miny moe
Catch a n****r by the toe
because it looks so childish, so innocent, so anodyne. The same is true of the materials Backer draws from to create his concrete poem, Transcript. It consists of lists, manifests, chronologies, medical experiment records, court testimony and the like, fragments of the day-to-day operations of the Nazi Holocaust. The look is matter-of-fact, quotidian. The reader leans in, trying momentarily to figure out the nature of a particular entry. When it becomes clear, it detonates.
One page was a list of at least a hundred public parks. Only when you reached the bottom did you realize that this comprised a list of venues forbidden to certain people. A few pages on it was made clear that restaurants, concert halls, bars, and cabarets were also off-limits. So was giving food to a Jewish family. So were many kinds of employment.
I didn’t know about this slow strangulation, this progressive assembly of humiliations, accruing probably long before the freight cars arrived.
This was first written, or assembled, in 1986. The English translation came in 2010. But when I chanced to hear about it last year I knew I had to find it, read it. A poem about the Holocaust? The most delicate, small-scaled art form sent to document the most hideous, industrial-scaled atrocity in history? It works. A masterpiece that captures the demented, depraved minds of the Nazis in their own words. And only fragments: you have to piece together the total horror for yourself.
Of course you probably know a lot of details ahead of time, through films, literature, diaries, museums. Backer counts on that. But using the Nazis’ own words, their record-keeping—not intended for anything else—is maybe the most damning. And you get the full scope. In 129 pages Backer presents the full arc, the epic of inhumanity.
The forced starvation in Gaza, the roving bands of ICE agents in the U.S., our own gestapo, makes this poem more relevant than we want it to be. The Nazi mind is alive and well.
This can be read in one afternoon, easily. But not easily forgotten, I'm sure.

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Describing this book is something I've been thinking on for a week or two. This is essentially a true accounting of various parts of the Holocaust, and in a stark brutal honesty way since it is transcripts of letters, memos, SOP, records, etc from members of Hitler's regime, or notes from victims. It was so so hard to read-especially death counts. But I also felt it was a very important read.

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concrete poetry. Textual remains. Context. Translated. Disturbing.

"a methodical gibberish that replicates a deadly gibberish"

[Leif · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would say that words cannot express... but, as transcript ably demonstrates, words can and do express. My only defense is that the words transcript presents are themselves solely capable of representing themselves; or, as the note in the afterward cites from Backer, these words become a code, a "methodical gibberish that replicates a deadly gibberish" (149).

Make of it what you will.

[Mills College Library]

831.914 B1263 2010

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly powerful. The selection of words and depictions of the actions that occurred is beyond moving. A must read.

[Emily Wilkerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually read this one in English about a month before it was assigned to me in German, so I've read the original and the translation.

[Amy Bernhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

So hard to read. Chilling. But so important.