Holocaust Poetry

1) What is your initial reaction to this poem?
That it is a very deep and meaningful poem about children's futures and lives being thrown away. 
2) How does the author use 'we' in this poem?
He uses it as a collective team as if to say he was one of the children. 
3) What are the verbs used in the first sentence?
Played, loved and laughed. 
4) What are the verbs used in the second sentence? How do they contrast with those used 
in the first sentence?
Ripped and thrown. These two verbs are very different to the ones in the first sentence. The verbs in the first sentence represent a sense of happiness and playfulness whereas in the second sentence it seems this has been disregarded and someone bad has happened as these words are much more serious and darker words. 
5) What effect does the listing of 'lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers'? What is it 
meant to signify?
This signifies what these children could have become if there lives weren't thrown away. 
6) What simile is used in the poem and what effect does it have?
''We were taken away in the dead of the night like cattle cars.'' This gives us the effect that the children were taken away without any serious thought and as if there was nothing wrong with doing so. 
7) How has the poet represented herself in the last sentence?
It sums up the whole poem and gives it a dramatic ending to everything that had already been said. 
8) If you could communicate to this person, a victim of the Holocaust, what would you want to say? What do you feel that you must do in your life as a response to this poem?
I would feel for them and want to get a sense of what they experienced by talking and asking them how it felt to see friends and family taken away from their homes for ever and then gassed in chambers. I would want to how they felt about what the Germans were explaining to the world about the concentration camp. The last thing I would want to know how they found the will to keep going and not give in whilst inside the camp.