Les Murray

The Beneficiaries

The Beneficiaries - meaning Summary

Beneficiaries Who Refuse Praise

The poem accuses Western intellectuals of moral hypocrisy for failing to acknowledge Auschwitz even while presenting it as proof they "won" a long struggle against God. Murray presents a terse, ironic observation: those who benefit intellectually or culturally from the Holocaust refuse to praise or fully reckon with it. The lines highlight culpability, selective memory, and the unsettling relation between atrocity, ideology, and intellectual identity.

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Higamus hogamus Western intellectuals never praise Auschwitz. Most ungenerous. Most odd, when they claim it’s what finally won them their centuries- long war against God.

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