“If we let them in, they will steal our bread:

 Written in 1940, “Refugee Blues” remains to this day one of the most powerful poems on the tragedy of Shoah. The poem is given voice in first person by a Jew refugee who escapes Nazi Germany with his beloved one, and finds himself wandering without a destination, rejected by every individual he meets on their way. 

 When I first read the poem, the first thing that immediately struck me was the idea of silent acceptance. The poor man knows that he and his people have done nothing wrong and hat they are just as equal as the others and still, he accepts his fate and resignedly leaves his whole life behind, looking for salvation. 

 What I believe Auden wanted to convey with his poem was the humanity of these people. Through words, he brings back the humanity of which they had been stripped by the Nazi Regime. 

 Therefore, the poem is nothing but a bitter denunciation of the indifference of Humankind towards those fellow Human Beings who suffer. 

Another aspects that deeply disturbed me was the relevance and actuality of Auden's words. It is shocking and frankly also scary how nowadays we are still hearing those words so full of hatred and fear. Auden's poem is the ultimate proof that history must not be forgotten, if Humankind wants to develop a better accepting and more harmonious society. 

Auden’s work is actualised, even though it deals with Hitler and Nazism the scenes represent nowadays refugees (I thought about Calais in France or hotspots built on Greek islands).

The message is clear: FOREIGNERS are not accepted in other countries as it HAD happened before, during WWII.

They try to PROTEST, but it is useless, sometimes communication is impossible. They are considered different and inferior. 

The image of the sea with its beautiful but dangerous waves is both at the beginning and end of the video. If I focus on it, I see its meaning: the oceans separate one continent from the other, in some cases it represents the only means of escape. 

A boat trip hides tears and fears, but also hopes: at the end of it, a refugee is safe, at the very beginning of a new life.  He/she has been brave enough to try to start over. Of course, it is full of pain and issues, but there are other opportunities, to discover and live them is the key. 
Therefore I can affirm that the poem can be interpreted and actualized in many situations. I believe that it is full of hope and it should be read by every refugee or man/woman who is seeking his/her way.

The verses highlight the selfishness and apathy of mankind, which turns out to be extremely cruel. 

Men rely on bureaucracy (''Old passports can't do that'' or ''If you've got no passport, you're officially dead'') or they create terrible groundless prejudices like ''If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread''. The same situation occurs today with millions of people who land every day on the Italian coasts and do not receive adequate attention, in Greece, where immigrants cannot touch the peninsula, or in America, where the president had announced his intention to build an anti-immigration wall. The topicality of the problem is also demonstrated through the video that personally made me goosebumps.

The moving music, the narrative voice and the images of many people in difficulty made me perceive that man is not able to break down the wall of prejudices, but continues incessantly to make the same mistakes throughout history.I think the most moving and symbolic scene of the video is that of the child who makes a kite fly, while the narrator says. '' We are still alive''.That means that we must do something because these people,are human beings.

In the same years as Auden's poetry,Charlie Chaplin said, ''Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance.'' Personally I think it still needs to start. 

This quotation, which opens the short documentary, is extremely meaningful and can briefly sum up the author’s message and the current situation we are living.

Auden is a British revolutionary poet, who dealt ,in his poem ‘Refugee Blues’ , with the escape of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany during World War II; he personally experienced Nazism when he left the U.S. In the poem, the leading character is a German Jew, who is speaking to a companion about their terrible living conditions.

This poem deals with a current topic, which still in 2020 happens regularly. People from poor and underdeveloped countries, where safety is precarious because of wars or conflicts, leave them in the hope of saving their lives. However, escaping from their own country is often more dangerous. Refugees aren’t usually welcomed: they are not considered as citizens and they are always seen as strangers. In addition to that, prejudice and violence are aways present as for Jewish refugees in Auden’s poem.

Calais is a city in the north of France, which is well-known for its proximity to England and its “jungle”. The documentary indeed shows us the numerous encampment in that particular part of France. Refugees , especially years ago, tried to leave France and go to England so to find a job and have a better life.

There is the Nazi regime, with its violence against Jews and there is the less explicit anti-Semitism of countries who use immigration quotas to exclude Jews: these countries have the power to help, but they refuse to do so. Therefore, they are complicit in the Jews' suffering and mass murder.

Hitler has taken power in Germany and believes Jews “must die. In this poem, the speaker does not find refuge elsewhere: without the documentation, the speaker is unable to enter the country, that could save the speaker’s life.

 At the opening of the poem, the speaker complains "there is no place for us, my dear", even if the "city" in which they are found has managed to find houses for "ten million" people. Indeed, city inhabitants seem more willing to help the animals of these refugees: they give comfort and welcome to cats, they even dress their dogs: they act as if the lives of animals were more precious to them than the lives of the Jews.

As a result, the speaker is isolated and trapped between countries without a clear sense of home. 

From this poem I perceived a feeling of abandonment and despair, I was struck by the sense of pain that the poet transmitted within the text and the great strength he had to be able to denounce this tragic situation of indifference and inhumanity on the part of each one.

Auden describes many situations to prove the conditions that probably we couldn’t imagine. This sufferance could be compared to what is happening nowadays: refugees are not accepted when they change country to look for new opportunities, for their differences from the point of view of culture, traditions, religion, language...

What I really want to say is that the phenomenon of migration has always existed, because human beings need to move and to change. Moreover migration is a consequence of colonialism: we know that many countries are underdeveloped because of exploitation and oppression from colonizers, so many poor exploited people want to change their life for many reasons, like job, war and difficult climate conditions, and they absolutely have to be granted the possibility to do it.

The images of the different faces and hands worn-out by the hard work are stuck in my mind. As a result of the impact of these images, I remembered the face of this black man that was on a bus in Berlin, sitting near me and Francesca. We were speaking (in) Italian and this man recognized our accent. As a consequence, he asked us whether we were Italian, and then he said: “La mia terra, il mio paese”. I was moved, because he was not born in Italy and he (had not) didn't have  a perfect accent, but he said it with such (a) conviction, he (has) had (the) tears in his eyes and I think that he was more Italian than some people that (are) were really born in Italy, but that do not feel the same sense of belonging.

I will never (forgot) forget those words and I hope that one day everyone will learn that immigrants are not bad people, they are not in our country in order to steal our work. On the contrary, they are good people, who are migrating to another land in order to have a better life. They are survivors, they are warriors and we should respect them, like they respect us. 

Moreover, we see that the poem cites Hitler, and WE CAN compare our Refugees to Jews during (the) World War II: we must say, the similarities between them are clear. They both were and are discriminated by the society and by the authorities for no reason, just because they were AND ARE ‘different’. It’s true, maybe they were and they are different, they had and they have a different skin colour, a different religion and a different culture, but it’s also true that at the end of the day, they're not that different from the rest of us, IN THAT WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS.
At the end of the day, we’re all the same and we all live on the same Planet. 

In my opinion, society must forget about differences and start focusing on team work and, most of all, integration. 

The poem was written in 1939, at  the beginning of WW II, by W. H. Auden, when he was moving to New York. 

There is a wide range of powerful imagery used to build up the overall picture. 

The poem has an effect beyond the apparent simplicity of its message and it gains in power from the musical form and the ideas within it. 

This is a poem about the plight of a specific group of refugees displaced and arriving in a country that is generally hostile to their situation: Auden focuses on the German Jews arriving in the UK at that time. 
This poem IS 'FOOD FOR THOUGHT': IT MAKES us think, because it deals with an actual situation, the situation of MIGRANTS, who nowadays are discriminated. This topic should make everyone think (about it), in order to delete prejudices. 
By reading the poem, the reader can understand that the (narrator) POETIC VOICE fixes about his personal experience, because Auden (was) LOVED a Jewish person who escaped from the Nazi regime. 
What strucks me the most is how the (narrator) POETIC VOICE describes the scene: he wants to give us the most realistic picture of the message he wants to send. He wants to make us think about the injustices AGAINST these poor innocent people. 

The poem is extremely deep and sad. In reading it, the reader is able to empathize and imagine the situation in his/her mind, drawn by the words of the poet. 
In addition, Auden's topic can be considered current, since our society still discriminates and have many prejudices against immigrants.

From the visual point of view, the poem is composed by twelve tercets: in each stanza the first and the second verse rhyme, whereas every third line we can find the repetition of the words “my dear”: THESE POETIC DEVICES CERTAINLY SERVE THE PURPOSE OF MAKING THE POEM - WHICH IS AN INTENSE BLUES - MORE ENGAGING , AS IT ENTHRALLS THE READERS WITH ITS SOUND AND RHYTHM....

The poem deals with the plight of German Jews in the 1930s, right after the promulgation of racist laws. 

Millions of Jews migrated in order to escape the Nazi persecution, however most of the countries refused to receive them and as a result many Jewish refugees were sent back.

The speaker  Poetic Voice is one of these Jews, who is speaking to addressing a companion, telling her about their pitiful condition: they are unable to enter the country since they don’t have a passport. The speaker  Poetic Voice strongly denounces the hypocrisy and the inhumanity of those countries, which could have saved many people, including him. This poem is extremely touching and thought-provoking, as the author is able to make the reader aware of the miserable condition of Jews at that time. We can empathise with the poetic voice and understand his feelings of being unwelcome and subject to discrimination.

The lines that struck me the most were:

The inhumanity of the political system and bureaucracy, which often seem to work against common sense and do not care about people's condition, is extremely appalling. Furthermore, the insecurity of the poet is heart-breaking: he and “his dear”don't know what to do or where to go, they have to live “one day at a time” without knowing what comes next, without any certainty or stability, an exhausting way of living.