The Hatred Exposed at Babi Yar Babi Yar, a poem written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, tells the story of the Nazi invasion in a small part of Russia, in which, throughout During the Second World War, more than one hundred thousand Jews, Gypsies, and Russian prisoners of war were brutally murdered. However, what is unique about this particular perspective is that the narrator is not a Jew, but a simple observer horrified by the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust. It is through allusions, as well as other literary devices, that Yevtushenko caustically elucidates the absurdities of the hatred that caused the Holocaust, as well as the narrator's identification with the Jews and their history of oppression. Perhaps, the most effective literary tool used in "Babi Yar" is allusion. The first clear allusion seen in the poem is to Egypt (line 6). This reference harks back to the slavery of the Jews in Egypt before they became a nation. In line 7, the narrator refers to how many Jews died on the cross. The reason for these initial allusions in the first section is clear. Yevtushenko is establishing the history of the Jewish people, one of oppression, prejudice and innocent victims. The next delusion in the poem is a reference to the Dreyfus affair, a more modern manifestation of irrational and greedy anti-Semitism. It is in the Dreyfus case that an innocent man is accused of espionage and sent to prison for more than ten years, despite an overwhelming amount of evidence proving his innocence, simply because he is Jewish. Yevtushenko uses these allusions to lead into his reference to a boy from Bielostok who is murdered by the Russian people... middle of paper... transcend race, religion, color and sex and involve the entire human race. Yevtushenko powerfully describes the tragedy of the absurdity of the unfounded and long-standing hatred that many people feel towards the Jewish people as a whole. Furthermore, the narrator speaks to each reader as if he were a Jew, not in the sense of having lived the experience, but rather in the sense of being part of the process of remembering, part of human society that feels moral value. obligation to recognize what happened and to learn from that experience, so that humanity is not condemned to repeat the unthinkable. Perhaps it is more appropriate that Yevtushenko ends the poem with the ironic accusation that only when all anti-Semitic and hate-based people are hated and "spitted on", can the narrator truly be a "Russian", the standard for true humanity.