Perseverance In Hitler Youth, By John Boyne

“...I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.” These are the wise words of Winston Churchill who reminds us that in times of conflict, the best way to respond is to persevere through hardships and change evil ideology. An entire life’s fate can be decided by one decision, brave souls daring enough to make the choice between fight or flight, like Sophie Scholl in the non-fiction book Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, and Anne Frank in her Autobiography Anne Frank: The Diary Of A Young Girl, or cowering in desperate times behind ignorance and innocence, like Bruno in the historical fiction novel The Boy In The Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.

One event has changed so many lives and its effects have not been reversed to this day. “...but these experiences have not necessarily prevented their ability to adapt to day-to-day life.” The only way this could've been accomplished was through perseverance. Corresponding to perseverance in times of struggle, in Elie Wiesel’s Night, a young Eliezer is sent to a concentration camp with his father and is tortured along with all other Jews in the concentration camp. Several times Eliezer wanted to quit stating “If that is true, then I don't want to wait. I'll run into the electrified barbed wire. That would be easier than a slow death in the flames,” but he persevered and didn't give up the fight. “On my father’s cot there lay another sick person. They must have taken him away before daybreak and taken him to the crematorium. Perhaps he was still breathing,” when his father became very ill and could no longer carry on, Eliezer made the choice between choosing to die along with his father, stuck in a concentration camp, or continue to fight mentally and physically to make it out of the concentration camps alive with the little bit of strength he had