W.H Auden does what a blues writer would do: takes a single main theme and makes variations on it, leading to a particularly powerful finale. The theme of this 'song' is the abuse of human rights experienced not only by German Jews but by other Jews and by refugees anywhere.

'Some in mansions, some in holes' - but no home at all for the refugee.

'Once we had a country': now, not only no home, but no country either. In the Jews' case, since the exodus from Palestine in the 1st century, many had, where and when they could, taken the nationality of whichever country they grew up in. From the end of the 19th century many Jews hoped to emigrate to Palestine, but this was not easy: the country was also the home of Arab Palestinians, and Palestine itself had long been run by foreigners. (From 1922 till 1948, the administration of Palestine was British.)

'Old passports': out of date and officially invalid and non-renewable for Jews.

'The consul': representing a country to which the refugees wanted to travel.

'a committee': officially set up to try to help refugees, but with its hands tied politically.
'
a public meeting': one of a number of such meetings held in countries receiving Jewish immigrants - there was resistance to strangers 'stealing our jobs'.

'they must die': it is generally agreed that Hitler gave an order to exterminate Jews, for whom he held a lifetime's hatred.

'poodle in a jacket': the Jews were treated as lower than animals - and later the Nazi officials would speak of them as sub-human.

'fish swimming as if they were free': even animals seem to have more freedom than the Jewish refugees.

'no politicians': the decision to destroy the Jews was a political decision; a decision to go to war is a political decision.

'a building with a thousand floors': copious accommodation? A vast ghetto? An image of Babel, and the many races of the world? None has room for the Jews.

'ten thousand soldiers': troops looking for Jews to send them to labour camps, from which few emerged? Or, later, the death squads sent to find Jews and kill them? Either way, this 'song' arrives at its terrifying ending: the refugees are being deliberately hunted down, and, as the preceding tension-building stanzas have made clear, they have nowhere at all to go.

萧伯纳说：宁可独居野外，也不要和固执的人一起 同处一室