O the Chimneys / Selected Poems

Nelly Sachs shared the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966 for her deeply moving Holocaust poetry, which transmutes the horrors of genocide into verse of devastating lyrical power. Having narrowly escaped Nazi Germany by fleeing to Sweden in 1940, Sachs devoted her art to bearing witness to the destruction of European Jewry. Her poems give voice to the unspeakable, forging from the imagery of chimneys, ash, and exile a body of work that stands as one of the most important literary testimonies of the twentieth century.

As a German-Jewish exile in Sweden, Sachs wrote from the intersection of survival and mourning, channeling the experience of the Holocaust into poetry that is at once personal lament and collective memorial. Her work occupies a vital place alongside that of Paul Celan and Primo Levi in the literature of witness, ensuring that the memory of the Holocaust endures in the language of art.