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Yevtushenko speaks in first person throughout the poem. This creates the tone of him being in the shoes of the Jews. As he says in lines 63-64, "No Jewish blood is mixed in mine, but let me be a Jew . . . " He writes the poem to evoke compassi ....

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... but fear pervades the area. Fear that such a thing could occur at the hands of other humans. The poet feels the persecution and pain and fear of the Jews who stood there in this place of horror. Yevtushenko makes himself an Israelite slave of Egypt and a martyr who died for the sake of his religion. In lines 7-8, he claims that he still bars the marks of the persecution of the past. There is still terrible persecution of the Jews in present times because of their religion. These lines serve as the transition from the Biblical and ancient examples he gives to the allusions of more recent acts of hatred. The lines also allude to the fact that ...