According to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, approximately 10,000 children were moved and saved from their homes on the kindertransport during World War II. Lisa, our protagonist, is one of them. The Children of Willesden Lane is about a young girl, Lisa, who is sent off by her family in Austria on the kindertransport to England in hopes she can escape the Nazis. She navigates a life filled with new beginnings, tragedy, and hope. This book greatly exhibits the theme that family is not just who you are related to, it's who you love most. I chose this theme because even though Lisa is separated from her biological family, she still is able to find people she loved and felt safe with. “There were plenty of Danzingers in the phone book, especially in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood …show more content…
Therefore, the theme family is not just who you are related to, it's who you love most because of the other children in her house showing desire to help her in her time of need. They are all struggling, but they help her despite all of it. They show how much they care for her by doing this. Readers can learn that when you stick together, hope arises. “Looking around at the familiar faces, she realized how deeply she had missed her Willesden Lane family.”(114). This demonstrates the theme family is not just who you are related to, it's who you love most in the story because Lisa is separated from the rest of the children of Willesden Lane and is undergoing a long period of time without seeing them. She returns and further realizes that the group of children she had been surrounded by previously is her newfound family. Readers can learn that the time you spend with people can truly make your heart realize how much you care for them. “When she was finished, Günter gave a toast to all those missing today, making special mention of Paul and Johnny King Kong. May we remember the beauty of their gentle spirits and keep their memory in our hearts for the rest of our lives.
The main character in this story is a Jewish girl named Alicia. When the book starts she is ten years old, she lives in the Polish town of Buczacz with her four brothers, Moshe, Zachary, Bunio, and Herzl, and her mother and father. The Holocaust experience began subtly at first when the Russians began to occupy Buczacz. When her brother Moshe was killed at a “ Boys School” in Russia and her father was gathered up by German authorities, the reality of the whole situation quickly became very real. Her father was taken away shortly after the Russians had moved out and the Germans began to occupy Buczacz.
With the amount of anti-Semitic activity in Germany, no Jew was safe and Helen realized this quickly. In order to protect her child he had to give her to family to keep her safe. “There we said goodbye as casually as possible and gave these strangers our child.” After this moment, Helen’s fight for survival to see her child once again. Finding a place to hide became very difficult as no one wanted to host a Jewish family due to the fear of the Nazis finding out. “People were understandably nervous and frightened, so the only solution was to find another hiding place.”
“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.
In the novel “The Diary of Laura’s Twin by Kathy Kacer is about a girl named Laura who is having her bat mitzvah and gets assigned to do a project about a kid from the holocaust who never had got the chance to have a bat mitzvah. Laura gets a diary from an old woman but does not know it’s her diary from when she was a little girl. As she reads it learns that the girl Sara is around her age and is living in the Warsaw ghetto during the holocaust with her bother, sister, mom, dad, grandpa, grandma and her best friend Deena. As Laura is reading the book in her life she goes throw problems with her friends and other kids from her school destroying gravestones.
In The book Devil in Vienna, by Doris Orgel, Inge a young, intelligent Jewish girl is faced with the same types of problems. Being Jewish at that time was no small problem. Instead of worrying what to wear the next day, she would have to worry about whether or not her family would be safe or taken to a concentration camp. Inge not only had to face the problem of keeping her family together, she had to find a way to maintain a friendship with her best friend Lieselotte. Lieselotte’s father was a Nazi and forbade her to keep any contact with Inge, but the two girls would always find a way to see or write to each other even when things were rough. Inges father also began to disprove of their friendship and pretty soon if either one were to mention the other’s name she would be punished. Yet the girls refused to forget each other. One day Inge received the news. She was to move away to Yugoslavia to escape Hitler’s regime. The girls promised to never forget each other and they never did; even long after the war was over.
To begin, “Escape from Warsaw”, by Ian Serraillier is a book of courage and bravery. This book is a story of a family who is Polish and the things that happened to them during World War II. World War II was a time of conflict and lasted about six years. The Polish family lived in Warsaw in a very suburb area and the main character Joseph was the headmaster of a school. His wife was Swiss and he had three children. The children’s names were Ruth, Edek and Bronia. Joseph was living a very difficult and challenging life away from his family, he also had to teach school in only German and the Nazis took him to prison for turning a picture of a Nazi on the wall around. Warsaw was run by the Nazis and was a place of terror and fear. The family has to now go through many hardships and challenges which will bring their bond as a family closer.
The heavily proclaimed novel “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak is a great story that can help you understand what living in Nazi Germany was like. Throughout the story, the main character, Liesel goes through many hardships to cope with a new life in a new town and to come to the recognition of what the Nazi party is. Liesel was given up for adoption after her mother gave her away to a new family, who seemed harsh at first, but ended up being the people who taught her all the things she needed to know. Life with the new family didn’t start off good, but the came to love them and her new friend, Rudy. As the book carried along, it was revealed that the Hubermanns were not Nazi supporters, and even took in a Jew and hid him in their basement later on in the book. Liesel became great friends with the Jew living in her basement, Max, who shared many similarities which helped form their relationship. Both of
In order to see how Hannah’s development effects the theme, it is necessary to understand what caused her mind to change. Hannah Stern is a twelve year old, Jewish girl who lives with her family in New Rochelle, New York. She is disinterested, embarrassed, and strives to distance herself from her family and her heritage. Hannah’s family is going to her Grandparents house in Bronx to celebrate Passover with a traditional Seder dinner. Not quite understanding the importance of this family gathering, Hannah whines and complains to her parents that she doesn’t want to go. Several members of her family suffered at the hands of the Nazis during World War II and it still has made large impact on their lives, especially her grandpa's. Hannah hates recalling the traumas of
The whole world’s scared and they decide to swallow the fear. Growing up in a wartime environment isn’t easy at all. All of their lives have been mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood. Yet, Anne Frank still believed that people are good at heart. Jeanne and Elie Wiesel decided to write about their experiences, teaching others about the World War II. Their childhood and adolescence may have been taken away, but they are all still endeavoring for their future.
"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children" (Nelson Mandela). If this statement is considered true, then it's fair to say that during times of the Holocaust, the German society was at an all time low. Children during the Holocaust did not have a carefree childhood, like they should have, but instead were placed under strenuous conditions. They had to go through being separated from all family and friends, being chosen the first to go to, and in most cases a permanent loss of family members. The Holocaust was undoubtedly a horrific experience for everyone involved but for children it must have been traumatizing.
Those who survived are here to tell the tragic and devastating history of their lives. The survivors have shared brutal but yet realistic stories from each of their experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust. History shall never repeat itself in the manner of racism, murder, and fear of our leaders. The burning hope of those who were involved still generates an enormous sadness upon the many who have heard the horror of the Holocaust.
Regine Donner, a famous Holocaust survivor, once said, “I had to keep my Jewishness hidden, secret, and never to be revealed on penalty of death. I missed out on my childhood and the best of my adolescent years. I was robbed of my name, my religion, and my Zionist idealism” (“Hidden Children”). Jewish children went through a lot throughout the Holocaust- physically, mentally, and emotionally. Life was frightening and difficult for children who were in hiding during the rule of Adolf Hitler.
“Even in the darkest hour, when all hope seems lost… there is light.” Tolkein. The story, Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, is about the a few survivors of WW2 who go on a long journey to get to the Wilhelm Gustloff. They end up meeting multiple people along the way and they all end up developing and changing along the journey. The families and children like Florian, Joana, Halinka, and Klaus that survived the “darkest hour” represent the future and the start of a new, better life. All of the characters that ended up surviving were driven by the need to create a future for the children and the need to be with their “family” they found along their journey.
Over one million Jewish children died during the Holocaust. They were ripped out of their homes and taken away from their families, and stripped of their childhoods. Innocent lives were caught in a war that they were not able to stop. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he promised Germany that he would improve life their by getting rid of the one race that caused the problems, the Jews. Jews, including Jewish children, were sent to concentration camps, inspected, and if approved, were sent to work. All others would have been sent to be killed. Being sent to work did not ensure survival, children would be given very little food and water, and beaten severely, which caused their death. None of the children of the Holocaust will ever forget the experience they went through, they will always remember.
“One of the most extraordinary aspects of Nazi genocide was the cold deliberate intention to kill children in numbers so great that there is no historical precedent for it.” (Lukas, 13 Kindle) About 1.5 million children were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust—one million being killed because they were Jews (ushmm.org) The Germans had a clearly defined goal of killing the Jewish children so that there would be no remnants of their race to reproduce, resulting in extinction. Not only were the children that were victimized in the Holocaust persecuted and murdered, but they were all stripped of their childhood. Children were not allowed to be children—they had to, for their own survival, be adults. The oppression of children because of race was a direct result of Hitler’s cruel policies and beliefs. In order to stifle the Jewish race from growing, the children were the first to be slaughtered at extermination camps (ushmm.org).