Alice Friedmann: A Short Story

663 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Impacts of the holocaust

Imagine seeing a loved one for the last time without knowing it. Regretting your last words to them would be heart shattering. Just like Alice Friedmann and I, many people around the world have experienced speaking to a loved one, and then, all of a sudden, never talking to them again.
Alice Friedmann was born on October 20, 1919. The Holocaust hadn’t affected her town and life until around 1938, when she was 19. The Germans were closing the borders of Czechoslovakia. Transports vehicles were emerging out of nowhere, taking friends and family members from everyone. This sent the city into a panic. One day, in 1941, Alice Friedmann, who was twenty-two years old at the time, had just gotten notice that her younger brother, who was now also a young man, was leaving on the next transport vehicle to somewhere unknown. Not a single person knew where the trucks were headed on the transports. Alice, her brother, and the rest of their family cherished their time together, knowing that her brother would soon leave. Finally, it was time for her brother to leave. Alice was walking with her brother to say her goodbyes at a transport assembly station in Prague. Her heart …show more content…

He had suffered from a stroke in October of 2013. Time had now passed, and it was January twenty-first, 2014. I had gone to visit him in the hospice center. Unfortunately, his health was deteriorating day by day. The doctors told my mom, grandma, and aunt, that he had only about three to five days left to live. This news made me uneasy and frightened. Little did I know that this was the last day I would get to talk to him, and see him alive. The next day at school, I felt that something was wrong, and I came home to find out that he had passed away. Similar to Alice, I had said goodbye to someone whom I loved dearly, for one last time, without having the knowledge that this would be my last interaction with

Show More
Related

  • Chapter Summary of I Have Lived a Thousand Years, Growing Up in the Holocaust by Livia Bitton-Jackson

    3706 Words  | 8 Pages

    Elli Friedmann has returned 50 years later for a ceremony to the spot where she was once liberated by the American army. Living during the Holocaust, she has chosen to give us her story.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis Of Eleanor Ayer's Parallel Journeys

    834 Words  | 2 Pages

    When in America, Helen found that it was hard not to talk about past and the stories of her imprisonment. “Some survivors found it impossible to talk about their pasts. By staying silent, they hoped to bury the horrible nightmares of the last few years. They wanted to spare their children and those who knew little about the holocaust from listening to their terrible stories.” In the efforts to save people from having to hear about the gruesome past, the survivors also lacked the resources to mentally recovery from the tragedy.

    Read More

  • Parallel Journey Quotes

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness,” Desmond Tutu once said (“Desmond Tutu Quotes”). During the Holocaust, the Jews were treated very badly but some managed to stay hopeful through this horrible time. The book Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer shows how Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck who had two very different stories but managed to stay hopeful. Helen was a Jew who went into hiding for awhile before being taken away from her family and being sent to a concentration camp. Alfons was a member of the Hitler Youth where he became the youngest member of the German air force. To him, Hitler was everything and he would die any day for him and his country. As for Helen, Hitler was the man ruining her life. The Holocaust was horrible to live through but some managed to survive because of the hope they contained.

    Read More

  • Surviving Hitler Essay

    698 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Silber Medal winning biography, “Surviving Hitler," written by Andrea Warren paints picture of life for teenagers during the Holocaust, mainly by telling the story of Jack Mandelbaum. Avoiding the use of historical analysis, Warren, along with Mandelbaum’s experiences, explains how Jack, along with a few other Jewish and non-Jewish people survived.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Night, by Elie Wiesel

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Elizer’s personal account of the holocaust does not merely highlight the facts of the holocaust: millions suffered and the event was politically and religiously motivated, but provides an in depth investigation to what a person endured mentally, physically, and emotionally. Beginning as a teenager, Elizer thought highly of God and of his own beliefs, however, that quickly diminished when he was put into a system of sorting and killing people. During the holocaust, Elizer was not the only person to change; almost everyone suffered and changed differently. The stressful and harsh times affected Elizer just as they affected the person working next to him in the factory. Elizer quickly began to question everything “I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?” (Wiesel 32). Although Elizer forms this mentality, he also finds the will to survive, to protect his father, and to not turn into the people that were aro...

    Read More

  • Analysis of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland by Janet Gross

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most narratives out of the Holocaust from the Nazis point of view are stories of soldiers or citizens who were forced to partake in the mass killings of the Jewish citizens. Theses people claim to have had no choice and potentially feared for their own lives if they did not follow orders. Neighbors, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, by Jan T. Gross, shows a different account of people through their free will and motivations to kill their fellow Jewish Neighbors. Through Gross’s research, he discovers a complex account of a mass murder of roughly 1,600 Jews living in the town of Jedwabne Poland in 1941. What is captivating about this particular event was these Jews were murdered by friends, coworkers, and neighbors who lived in the same town of Jedwabne. Gross attempts to explain what motivated these neighbors to murder their fellow citizens of Jedwabne and how it was possible for them to move on with their lives like it had never happened.

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel’s Night and Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place

    2850 Words  | 6 Pages

    Upon release from Ravensbruck, Ten Boom began caring for victims of the war and Holocaust and used her powerful speaking ability to share the trials and triumphs of her life. Together, these two powerful authors relive the horror and pain of the Holocaust to educate the unaware world. They teach of the past, warn of the future, an...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of A Lucky Child By Thomas Buergenthal

    1157 Words  | 3 Pages

    A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal is a memoir about his time as a Jewish child in multiple ghettos and death camps in and around Germany during World War II. The author shares about his reunions with family and acquaintances from the war in the years between then and now. Buergenthal wished to share his Holocaust story for a number of reasons: to prevent himself from just being another number, to contribute to history, to show the power and necessity of forgiveness, the will to not give up, and to question how people change in war allowing them to do unspeakable things. The memoir is not a cry for private attention, but a call to break the cycle of hatred and violence to end mass crimes.

    Read More

  • no pretty pictures

    1397 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is a miracle that Lobel and her brother survived on their own in this world that any adult would find unbearable. Indeed, and appropriately, there are no pretty pictures here, and adults choosing to share this story with younger readers should make themselves readily available for explanations and comforting words. (The camps are full of excrement and death, all faithfully recorded in direct, unsparing language.) But this is a story that must be told, from the shocking beginning when a young girl watches the Nazis march into Krakow, to the final words of Lobel's epilogue: "My life has been good. I want more." (Ages 10 to 16) --Brangien Davis

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Jennifer Teege's I Have To Love My Father, Don T I

    486 Words  | 1 Pages

    Recently, a 38 year old woman named, Jennifer Teege, discovered that her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the sadistic Nazi who was commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland and the person who killed more than 8,000 Jews. When Teege was going through depression, she tried doing psychological research at a library, which coincidently, was where she found her biological mother’s book called, "I Have to Love My Father, Don't I?". After realizing this discovery, she could not phantom the fact that she was related to this “monster”. Sometimes, she questions if whether or not she has any traits of him, but learned to accept her history and that they are both two very different people. Throughout Teege’s years, she was born to a Nigerian father who was a student which her mother had an affair with. Since her mother had a lot of work to do, she took Teege to Salberg House, a Catholic home for infants in suburban Munich. She was taken care of for about 3 years, but was adopted and was not able to see her mother until age 21. Now, Teege still sets out to discover more about her family’s history and even wrote books about it as well. In addition, she hopes to find her true identity and expresses that life should not be lived in the past.

    Read More

  • The Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims

    873 Words  | 2 Pages

    "A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.

    Read More

  • Story Of Regina Spiegel As A Holocaust Survivor

    1802 Words  | 4 Pages

    Source Site: https://www.ushmm.org/information/visit-the-museum/programs-activities/first-person-program/first-person-podcast/regina-spiegel-separation-at-auschwitz. The Holocaust took a toll on the lives of many holocaust survivors. Many were separated from their families and friends. They were forced out of their homes and into ghettos and were striped of their belongings and prized possessions. The average human does not know how the Holocaust affected life after the war for those in camps. It is the job of those who experienced the Holocaust first hand to share their experiences. Also they should be given the opportunity to relieve themselves of the pain and anguish they experienced. This is the story of Regina Spiegel a Holocaust survivor.

    Read More

  • Eleanor Ayer Parallel Journeys

    429 Words  | 1 Pages

    A majority of Helen’s life was a disaster, yet the true physical pain began on September 3, 1944. On this day, Helen and her husband, Siegfried, were loaded onto a crowded train car that would take them to the living hell known as Auschwitz. The darkness of the car could

    Read More

  • Female Holocaust Experiences

    2263 Words  | 5 Pages

    Ofer, Dalia, and Lenore J. Weitzman. Women in the Holocaust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. 1. Print.

    Read More

  • Nelly S. Toll's Behind The Secret Window

    666 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Nelly S. Toll’s memoir Behind the Secret Window, there are plenty of underlying messages and themes to remember throughout the book. This story of a young Polish girl takes you on the journey of her youth and describes how her family dealt with World War II. Many families such as Toll’s had to hide out for years on end and wait for a sign of safety from the horrible-spirited Nazis. These few years marked a truly depressing period of time for not only the Jewish community but for many other cultures as well. It was hard for anybody to keep hope within these ages because of all the negative things taking place. We can collectively gather the central idea from this text by using context clues and rhetorical devices. I agree strongly with the main concept that is developed over the course of the book that you should never give up hope no matter how hard life becomes. Nelly showed hope everywhere in this book by presenting emotional, credible, and logical appeals.

    Read More

More about Alice Friedmann: A Short Story

Open Document