A.M. Rosenthal's There Is No News From Auschwitz: A Review

Essay on

There's No News From Auschwitz

By A.M. Rosenthal

I intend to prove that Rosenthal used both objective and subjective in his story about Auschwitz. There are many times in the story when Rosenthal gives only strict facts. At the same time, there are times were he inputs his feelings. Sometimes, he mixes the two to tell the fact ,and to let you know how he feels. This is where the objective and subjective writing comes into play.

I have counted the number of paragraphs that I think fit into the category of objective or subjective. There are eight paragraphs, that I see, that are objective: the first, third, fourth, fifth, ninth, tenth, thirteenth, and seventeenth. There are four that I think are subjective: the second, sixth, eighth, and sixteenth. There are also a four that have been mixed with both objective and subjective. They are paragraphs seven, eleven, twelve, and fourteen.

Rosenthal uses only facts to tell certain facts of the story. One is," Brzezinka is a couple miles from the better-known southern Polish town of Oswiecim. Oswiecim has about twelve thousand inhabitants, is situated about 171 miles from Warsaw, and lies in a damp, marshy area at the eastern end of the pass called Moravian Gate." Another is," A long corridor where rows of faces stare from the walls. Thousands of pictures, the photographs of prisoners. They are all dead now, the men and women who stood before the cameras, and they all knew they were to die." In both Rosenthal use only the facts.

Rosenthal inputs his feeling in many places, also. One is," It all seemed frighteningly wrong, as in a nightmare, that at Brzezinka the sun should ever shine or that there should be light and greenness and the sound of young laughter. It would be fitting is at Brzezinka the sun never shone and the grass withered, because this is a place of unutterable terror. Another is, "And so there is no news to report about Auschwitz. There is merely the compulsion to write something about is, a compulsion that grows out of a restless feeling that to have visited Auschwitz and then turned away without having said or written anything would somehow be a most grievous act of discourtesy to those who died here." In both of those he used his own feeling to describe the way it was at Auschwitz.

Rosenthal uses a good mix of the two styles of writing. He makes the reader understand that Auschwitz has to be remembered, so that history never repeats itself. He says that if he were to visit Auschwitz and not write anything about it, it would be dishonoring the ones who died there. It makes you think about how terrible it must be. It mustn't be forgotten!