The Book Thief: Concentration Camps and Death Marches

2658 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Perspectives on the Holocaust

World War II was a grave event in the twentieth century that affected millions. Two main concepts World War II is remembered for are the concentration camps and the marches. These marches and camps were deadly to many yet powerful to others. However, to most citizens near camps or marches, they were insignificant and often ignored. In The Book Thief, author Markus Zusak introduces marches and camps similar to Dachau to demonstrate how citizens of nearby communities were oblivious to the suffering in those camps during the Holocaust. Much of The Book Thief revolved around a common German family hiding a Jew. During the Holocaust and the book, Jews and other people seen as insignificant were imprisoned in concentration camps. Max, the Jew that the Hubermanns were hiding, could cause them to get into deep trouble. However, they still hid him. The Hubermanns lived in a town close to a concentration camp and often saw marches of prisoners through town. Even with a potential prisoner living in their residence, the Hubermanns, along with most everyone else in Molching, were unaware of the events that actually happened in the concentration camp and marches. Dachau and its sub camps were awful places in general, but living as a prisoner in these camps was even worse, just as the marches were. The physical characteristics that made up Dachau and its sub camps were horrifying. The prisoners that had to face the extreme conditions of camps were certainly not oblivious to everything that was happening. Marches were a significant part of prisoners’ lives during the later parts of World War II. Lives of prisoners during World War II were horrendous throughout. This was the life Max most likely endured after he left th... ... middle of paper ... ...les/Janowitz%20on%20Nazi%20Atrocities.pdf> Lowenberg, William (Bill). Interview. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 1993. 15 Mar. 2014. Lynch, Pat. Interview. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 1995. 15 Mar. 2014. Peyton, Dallas. Interview. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2004. 19 Mar. 2014. media_oi.php?MediaId=4784> Sachar, Abram. “The Liberation of Dachau.” Jewish Virtual Library. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Concentration Camps In The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

    698 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ever wondered how life would have been during World War II. Well, Elie Wiesel was a young Jewish boy living in Transylvania, Romania. He lived with his father, mother, and 3 sisters. All of which were sent to concentration camps. They both lied about their ages so they could be together in the same camps. Throughout the book there were many relationships between father and son, some were very different from others. Almost all of them died. In the book Night, Elie Wiesel uses Tone, Characterization, and Foreshadowing to portray the effect of father and son had in concentration camps.

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel's Horrifying Holocaust Experience

    624 Words  | 2 Pages

    Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.

    Read More

  • The Book Thief Sparknotes

    1375 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak the narrator is Death, who shows itself as sympathetic and sensitive towards the suffering of the world and the cruel human nature, through its eyes, we can get to know the heartbreaking story of Liesel Meminger an ordinary, but very lucky nine-year old German girl; living in the midst of World War II in Germany. In this book the author provides a different insight and observation about humanity during this time period from a German view and not an Allied perspective, as we are used to.

    Read More

  • The Munson Report: Pearl Harbor Bombing

    1353 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gesensway, Deborah and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words, Images from America’s Concentration Camps. New York: Cornell University Press, 1987. Print.

    Read More

  • Night by Elie Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

    1726 Words  | 4 Pages

    The chaos and destruction that the Nazi’s are causing are not changing the lives of only Jews, but also the lives of citizens in other countries. Between Night by Elie Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are crucial to the survival of principle characters. Ironically, in both stories there is a foreseen future, that both seemed to be ignored.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between The Book Thief And Nazi Germany

    1308 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Similarities And Differences Between Elie Wiesel And Primo Levi

    1391 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps during World War Two, including Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Many who were sent to the concentration camps did not survive but those who did tried to either forgot the horrific events that took place or went on to tell their personal experiences to the rest of the world. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi wrote memoirs on their time spent in the camps of Auschwitz; these memoirs are called ‘Night’ and ‘Survival in Auschwitz’. These memoirs contain similarities of what it was like for a Jew to be in a concentration camp but also portray differences in how each endured the daily atrocities of that around them. Similarities between Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi’s memoirs can be seen in the proceedings that

    Read More

  • Elie Wiesel The Perils Of Indifference

    1733 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The Perils of Indifference” In April, 1945, Elie Wiesel was liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp after struggling with hunger, beatings, losing his entire family, and narrowly escaping death himself. He at first remained silent about his experiences, because it was too hard to relive them. However, eventually he spoke up, knowing it was his duty not to let the world forget the tragedies resulting from their silence. He wrote Night, a memoir of his and his family’s experience, and began using his freedom to spread the word about what had happened and hopefully prevent it from happening again.

    Read More

  • Response To Night By Elie Wiesel

    962 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this tiny novel, you will get to walk right into a gruesome nightmare. If only then, it was just a dream. You would witness and feel for yourself of what it is like to go through the unforgettable journey that young Eliezer Wiesel and his father had endured in the greatest concentration camp that shook the history of the entire world. With only one voice, Eliezer Wiesel’s, this novel has been told no better. Elie's voice will have you emotionally torn apart. The story has me questioning my own wonders of how humanity could be mistreated in such great depths and with no help offered.

    Read More

  • Totalitarian Government: Hitler and Stalin

    1102 Words  | 3 Pages

    Following the beginning of the Second World War, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would start what would become two of the worst genocides in world history. These totalitarian governments would “welcome” people all across Europe into a new domain. A domain in which they would learn, in the utmost tragic manner, the astonishing capabilities that mankind possesses. Nazis and Soviets gradually acquired the ability to wipe millions of people from the face of the Earth. Throughout the war they would continue to kill millions of people, from both their home country and Europe. This was an effort to rid the Earth of people seen as unfit to live in their ideal society. These atrocities often went unacknowledged and forgotten by the rest of the world, leaving little hope for those who suffered. Yet optimism was not completely dead in the hearts of the few and the strong. Reading Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag by Janusz Bardach and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi help one capture this vivid sense of resistance toward the brutality of the German concentration and Soviet work camps. Both Bardach and Levi provide a commendable account of their long nightmarish experience including the impact it had on their lives and the lives of others. The willingness to survive was what drove these two men to achieve their goals and prevent their oppressors from achieving theirs. Even after surviving the camps, their mission continued on in hopes of spreading their story and preventing any future occurrence of such tragic events. “To have endurance to survive what left millions dead and millions more shattered in spirit is heroic enough. To gather the strength from that experience for a life devoted to caring for oth...

    Read More

  • Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hitler believed that life was all about struggle; in order to live a full life you must struggle and overcoming this struggle is the true meaning of life. Hitler believes that only the strongest will survive, and the weak will succumb and cease to exist, which ultimately will better the country as a whole. Hitler carried out many projects to weed out the weak, and build his strong ‘perfect’ nation; this included Action T4, concentration and death camps. Auschwitz is Hitler’s creation; it is his constructed society to exterminate the Jewish population through immense struggle, by not only killing them, but he also attempts to strip them of every single shred of humanity until there is nothing left and they serve simply as economic investments. Those who survived did not allow their humanity to be confiscated.

    Read More

  • The Jazz Singer

    860 Words  | 2 Pages

    Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.

    Read More

  • Essay On Concentration Camps

    534 Words  | 2 Pages

    On September 1 in 1939, Germany with Hitler in charge attacked their neighbor country Poland. This was the beginning of a war that was to become the most comprehensive war in the history, so far, the World War II. During the next 6 years, concentration camps were built, houses and cities destroyed, and millions of people killed, most of them Jews. Before the War finally ended in 1945 Germany occupied on last country. On march 19 1944, they occupied Hungary, and in May 1944 they deported all the Jews to Aushwitz-Birkenau.

    Read More

  • Dystopia In Legend By Marie Lu

    1421 Words  | 3 Pages

    Prisoners and Jews taken during the war were forcibly relocated to areas with “no prepared lodging or sanitary facilities and little food for them” (Tucker). Often said the people were simply being held prisoner, many of them died; some from the brutality of the German soldiers and others through methods for mass killing (Tucker). The labor camps in the novel are based off of this concept; people being taken to an area with poor treatment and then being killed. Towards the beginning of the novel, June believes students who fail the trial go to labor camps and are never seen again (Lu 8). Later in the novel, Day enlightens June about the labor camps by telling her “the only labor camps are the morgues in hospital basements” (Lu 205). In both the labor camps featured in Legend and World War II prison camps, the people are told they are being taken away when in reality they are killed. Furthermore, in the Nazi Germany prison camps the people were living in poor conditions up until their death, similar to the individuals in the novel who were experimented on for the benefit of the military. The portrayal of labor camps as similar to wartime prison camps points out the brutality of the government towards its citizens, as well as, the way leaders tell lies to cover their unethical

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Lost Childhood By Yehuda Nir

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    This memoir, which sits on the library shelf, dusty and unread, gives readers a view of the reality of this brutal war. So many times World War II books give detail about the war or what went on inside the Concentration Camps, yet this book gives insight to a different side. A side where a child not only had to hide from Nazi’s in threat of being taken as a Jew, but a child who hid from the Nazi’s in plain sight, threatened every day by his identity. Yeahuda captures the image of what life was like from the inside looking out. “Many times throughout the war we felt alone and trapped. We felt abandoned by all outside help. Like we were fighting a war on our own” (Nir 186). Different from many non-fiction books, Nir uses detail to give his story a bit of mystery and adventure. Readers are faced with his true battles and are left on the edge of their

    Read More

More about The Book Thief: Concentration Camps and Death Marches

Open Document