The Many Choices of the Holocaust
Many people during the Holocaust made choices that could either be small or life changing. Simple choices and actions could very easily get a person killed in those times. The Holocaust is one of the most devastating historical times that has ever happened to this day. Over eleven million people were murdered during the Holocaust. Six million were Jews and the rest were from other ethnic groups such as the Slavs or Roma. Some of these deaths were caused by simple choices that people made. Millions of people during the Holocaust made difficult choices that can be displayed in two pieces of Holocaust Children’s Literature, the amazing and fictional story of The Book Thief, an amazing true tale called Eva’s
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Story, and Bruno’s brave journey in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Different choices are made in many children’s books based off of the Holocaust.
In one book called Rose Blanche a little girl by the name of Rose lives in Nazi Germany and makes some risky choices throughout the book that end up getting her killed in the end. She would take her food and give it to children in concentration camps. She did this until one day when something terrible happens. The author writes: “Soldiers saw the enemy everywhere. There was a shot…. Rose Blanche’s mother waited a long time for her little girl” (Innocenti 23-26). The choice to feed the Jewish children ended up having a very sad outcome. In another book The Harmonica a Jewish boy from Poland is given a harmonica by his father. He is taken from his family and put into a concentration camp. He plays Schubert on his harmonica for the other people to hear. The commandant of the camp happened to love Schubert and makes the boy play in exchange for bread. If his father hadn't made the choice to give him the harmonica then his son would probably be starving. This shows how big seemingly small choices can be. These two Holocaust themed children’s books illustrate how small choices can have a big difference some bad and some …show more content…
good. Even though The Book Thief is fiction, many realistic elements from the Holocaust are portrayed within the characters’ different choices. The main character, Liesel Meminger, has to make many important choices throughout the five hundred and fifty page book. For example, when Liesel reads her books she sits in the shallow basement of her house. On one particular time she is writing in the basement bombs go off and she was the only person that survived on Himmel Street. The author writes: “She survived because she was sitting in a basement reading through the story of her own life, checking for mistakes. Previously it had been declared too shallow, but on that night, October 7, it was enough” (Zusak 498). She was incredibly lucky that she chose to read in her basement. Another important character, Rudy Steiner, makes a risky choice that ends up getting him in trouble. In 1936 there were the Olympics and Jesse Owens was an African American competitor that Rudy was obsessed with. Rudy covers himself in charcoal to look like him and runs a race in front of the town people. The author writes: “He smeared the charcoal on, nice and thick, till he was covered in black. Even his hair recieved a once-over…. It’s even in his ears, for God’s sake” (Zusak 57-59). His father isn’t furious but doesn’t seem too happy either. This choice was very risky and earned Rudy an interesting reputation. These are only two examples of the many difficult choices made by all of the different characters of this book. Eva Schloss made many important choices before, during, and after her terrible visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Before she was taken to the concentration camps, Eva and Mutti had to hide from the Germans in several different places. Right before Eva and Mutti were captured they were staying at the Reitsmas’ house. The Reitsmas were just a regular family that made the very risky choice to hide Jews in their house. On Eva’s fifteenth birthday, German soldiers stormed into the Reitsma household, captured Eva and Mutti, and then took everyone to the Gestapo headquarters. The Reitsmas’ risky choice to hide Eva and Mutti ended up getting them taken away along with the people they were hiding. Mutti makes a deal with the Gestapo to let the Reitsma family go free. She has to give them a box of talcum powder. The author writes: “Mutti told us later that they were driven home and she had led the Gestapo officer up to the bathroom and showed him the large box of talcum powder that stood on the shelf” (Zusak 43-44). There was jewelry hidden inside the box and the Reitsma family was allowed to go. Eva and her family however, had to go to a prison camp. Mutti’s choice to give away her talcum powder and jewelry ended up getting the Reitsma family sent back home. This was very kind thing for Mutti to do. This part of the story includes only a couple of many different choices and decisions in Eva’s
Story. Many choices in The Boy and the Striped Pajamas, a fictional but amazing story, lead to some pretty bad consequences. Bruno, an eight year old German boy, moves to a house with his Nazi family right next to a concentration camp. He isn’t allowed in the so-called “back garden” that leads to the camps. He is very bored every day and decides to sneak to the garden and explore. This choice ends up earning him a new friend named Shmuel. Shmuel is also an eight year old boy, but he’s stuck inside of a concentration camp. Bruno finds his friend after adventuring through the woods behind his house. Bruno begins to visit pretty regularly. One day Bruno finds Shmuel inside of his house drying wine glasses. Bruno gives Shmuel some food and a soldier comes in and accuses Shmuel of stealing the food. Shmuel tells the soldier that Bruno gave it to him but Bruno denies it. Brunos choice to lie ended up getting Shmuel a black eye from the German soldier. The next day Bruno comes to see Shmuel, they are a bit mad at each other. But they forgive each other and are still friends. Bruno feels bad about lying so he lets Shmuel give him a favor to do. Shmuel asks Bruno to help find his dad. They dig a tunnel under the barbed wire separating them and Bruno climbs under. He puts on an old camp uniform Shmuel stole and pretends to be a prisoner. They look for Shmuel’s dad for a while until they are taken away with a group of other Jews into a building. They are forced to take off their clothes in one room and then sent into a “shower room”. They are all crowded in this room together and everyone is killed by being gassed. Bruno’s choice to help out Shmuel find his dad ended up getting both of them killed. The smallest of choices, such as just helping out a friend could go horribly wrong during the Holocaust. Many people throughout the Holocaust made choices some choices can be shown in The Book Thief, Eva’s Story, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and Holocaust Children’s Literature. Even the simplest of choices could determine what happened to someone next during the Holocaust. There were also many choices that turned out well for people during the Holocaust. Today simple choices don’t usually affect much but during the horrible years of the Holocaust, choices could affect so many different things.
In The Boy in The Striped Pajamas, a young boy named Bruno is friends with a child in a concentration camp, even though he knows he is not supposed to. In The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss, some of the Sneetches have stars and some do not. This leads to a lot of bullying, but in the end allows the Sneetches to realize that the way that someone looks does not matter. In The Harmonica, the young boy that is given a harmonica uses it to help many people feel better throughout the time of hate and intolerance. The boy plays for many people that live in a concentration camp. In The Whispering Town, many of the people overcome hate and intolerance by helping the Jewish people escape. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the many children’s books written about the Holocaust help overcome hate and intolerance in today’s world, so that something as awful as the Holocaust will never happen
In The Book Thief, author Markus Zusak tells the tragic story of Liesel Meminger and her experiences in 1939 Nazi Germany. Zuzak incorporates compelling literary devices such as toe curling foreshadowing, personification, and vivid imagery in the form of simile and metaphors to grasp the readers’ interest. Zusak’s use of various literary devices helps to deepen the text and morals of the story, and makes the dramatic historical novel nearly impossible to put down.
The Holocaust is a topic that is still not forgotten and is used by many people, as a motivation, to try not to repeat history. Many lessons can be taught from learning about the Holocaust, but to Eve Bunting and Fred Gross there is one lesson that could have changed the result of this horrible event. The Terrible Things, by Eve Bunting, and The Child of the Holocaust, by Fred Gross, both portray the same moral meaning in their presentations but use different evidence and word choice to create an overall
In this essay I will talk about The Book Thief Characters. The characters are Liesel, Rudy, And Max. I Will talk about how they are Influenced by society in This Book/Movie. I am going to three Paragraphs about these three characters. This essay is going to be a Compare and Contrast Essay.
In the novel The Book Thief, setting and point of view affect the theme and book a lot. The point of view of this novel is third person omniscient and a little bit of second and first person when the narrator talks about himself or to the reader. The setting of the story is Nazi Germany and it is based on a young girl named Liesel Meminger and what her life was like during this time. Her story is told by the narrator, death. Mark Zusak, the author, uses setting and point of view to express the theme of the novel because there was so much death happening, Liesel encountered him so many times, causing him to be able to tell her story; without this setting and the narrator, the theme story would have been different.
The Holocaust was the genocide of approximately six million people of innocent Jewish decent by the Nazi government. The Holocaust was a very tragic time in history due to the idealism that people were taken from their surroundings, persecuted and murdered due to the belief that German Nazi’s were superior to Jews. During the Holocaust, many people suffered both physically and mentally. Tragic events in people’s lives cause a change in their outlook on the world and their future. Due to the tragic events that had taken place being deceased in their lives, survivors often felt that death was a better option than freedom.
“I am haunted by humans” (Zusak 550). The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is about the horrors of World War II. Liesel and her family help out an old friend by hiding a Jew. Liesel also steals her first book when she at her brother’s funeral. Liesel Meminger’s remarkable actions like feeling good when she steals a book and her family hiding a Jew help demonstrate why Death is “haunted by humans”.
An estimated six million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust, and many were thought to have survived due to chance. Vladek in Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus, is one of the few Jewish people to survive the Holocaust. Though Vladek’s luck was an essential factor, his resourcefulness and quick-thinking were the key to his survival. Vladek’s ability to save for the times ahead, to find employment, and to negotiate, all resulted in the Vladek’s remarkable survival of the Holocaust. Therefore, people who survived the Holocaust were primarily the resourceful ones, not the ones who were chosen at random.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
Death states that, “I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both” (Zusak 491). This book shows us human doing things that weren’t even imaginable before this point. Many people give into ideas that were lies. But, we also watch a few people go out of their way and sacrifice everything for a man they barely even know. They do everything they can to keep him safe and alive. They work harder, the get another job, and they even steal. In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, death examines the ugliness and the beauty of humans.
Everyone is obviously different, but the personal qualities of a person and external situations that are occurring in the world around them can create similarities between people who have vast differences. In The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, this idea is very clearly shown through the lives of Liesel and Max. Although they come from vastly different backgrounds, the situations around them and their personal qualities reveal similarities between their lives. In The Book Thief, Max and Liesel’s lives have much in common, such as their love of literature and the impact on their lives as a result of Nazi persecution. However, they also differ in many aspects of their lives such as the degree of freedom that they were able to exercise and their attitudes toward life.
In The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, beauty and brutality is seen in many of the characters. Rudy, Liesel, and Rosa display examples of beauty and brutality often without realizing what exactly they are doing, because it is a part of their human nature. Zusak not only uses his characters, but also the setting of the novel in Nazi Germany to allude to his theme of the beauty and brutality of human nature. The time in which the novel is set, during World War II, displays great examples of beauty and brutality, such as the mistreatment of the Jews. As a result of this time period, the characters have to go through troubling times, which reveals their beautiful and brutal nature in certain circumstances. Zusak uses his characters and their experiences to demonstrate the theme of the beauty and brutality of human nature in the novel.
Throughout life many people face difficulties. Depending on the person’s strength some will get through tough times, but some will fail to overcome them. Two books where characters have to face many challenges include: Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Book Thief. These two stories deal with people overcoming the difficulties faced throughout everyday life. Some difficulties include racism, religious discrimination, and dealing with others’ cruelness or kindness. Examples from these books prove that the characters have challenges throughout the stories to overcome. In the face of adversity what causes some individuals to fail while others prevail?
Her diary showed how she knew about her fate from the earliest moments. This was because her friend Marta and her family had been deported. Eva knew that Marta and her family had been killed. Eva even heard that children were not spared. She was afraid that her time will come.
Stephenie Meyer once wrote, “Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved.”( Meyer, 1) During the Holocaust, Families were torn apart and put through intense cruelty due to the Natzi soldiers and command of Hitler. Even though people were scared to make a stand, families sacrificed their lives for the lives of others because families lost loved ones and families took risks in hiding Jews.