People of the Book “An Insect’s Wing: Sarajevo, 1940” Summary Geraldine Brooks’ book, People of the Book, conveys the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah. In the chapter “An Insect’s Wing: Sarajevo 1940,” Lola, a young Jewish girl, experiences running away from the German soldiers and coming back to Sarajevo. This chapter, also shares some details of how the famed Sarajevo Haggadah was saved from the World War II. This chapter shares the journey of Lola and the unpleasant events she went through to survive the invasion of the Nazis. Lola was separated from her family after a large group of Nazis arrived in Sarajevo. The chapter “An Insect’s Wing: Sarajevo, 1940,” claims that “On April 16, the Germans marched into Sarajevo and for the next two …show more content…
Lola was on the mission to find her mother, sister, and aunt without being captured by the German soldiers. Lola …show more content…
After a couple days staying there, things in the sanctuary began to fall apart when one of the guys from the odred, named Oskar, goes to a German camp to get a gun and then leaves, but doesn’t realize that he had trailed them back to the place where the rest of the odred was staying. Oskar goes to get a gun from the German camp because he wanted a gun like Isak, Maks, and Branko, the commander of the odred. The odred and Lola flee the place before the German army got to their headquarters. In the book it states that, “For seven months, Lola’s odred lived on the move, rarely spending more than one night or two in one campsite, carrying out demolitions of railway tracks or small bridges” (Brooks 71). As the temperature got lower the nights were freezing cold, Isak and Ina were not able to go any further. One night he had told Lola that he was not going to be able to continue, he had an injured foot and Ina was dying. Isak had told Lola “The ice–there was a thin place. My foot went through. It got wet and now it’s frozen” (Brooks 75). Ina was barely breathing, it was slow and irregular, and Isak foot had frostbite and nothing. After their discussion, he stood up and carried his little sister and walked toward the thin ice of the river and stood there until it
They stayed here during the winter while Alicia still searched for food, in the process, making many friends. News came one day that the Germans were beginning to fall back from the Russian fronts and Germany’s grip on the Jews in Poland was weakening. This news made Alicia and her mother move away from the old man who helped them.
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.
Many different responses have occurred to readers after their perusal of this novel. Those that doubt the stories of the holocaust’s reality see Night as lies and propaganda designed to further the myth of the holocaust. Yet, for those people believing in the reality, the feelings proffered by the book are quite different. Many feel outrage at the extent of human maliciousness towards other humans. Others experience pity for the loss of family, friends, and self that is felt by the Holocaust victims.
They told the prisoners, with a lot of excitement, that they were free. They ate and attended with a doctor. Gabi was diagnosed with typhoid, but he did not care. He took his medications and went out of the camp with Jacek and Mirek. As they walked through and found a house, they got cleaned as they had long time without do it. They got clean clothing and food. They satisfied and continued their way home. Gabi wanted to get to Beregszázs as soon as he could to meet with his family, but he was kind of afraid. In the other hand, Lily, Bertha, and Oli had a harder time to came back home. In Sommerda was still being bombarded, and they needed to walk a lot of kilometers. The German soldiers did not allow them to rest. Then, they needed to stay in a town because there were no trains that would take them to Beregszász. Gerta was so kind with them, as well as the American guys they met. And as soon as they found a train, they rode it. In some cases, the trains needed to stop because the railroads were destroyed. In other time, they took the wrong train and went to the wrong direction. Took them a lot of days after liberation to get home. Once all of them were reunited, they felt complete, but I am sure that took them a lot of time to convince themselves about Herman’s dead. Being together was all that matter to them. They did not want to get separated again
This engaging book takes the reader to the concentration camps set in the Bosnian war era which was the most horrific ‘genocide’ since the Holocaust. It provides the reader an insight into what it is to survive endless nights full of violence, both mental and physical and then to overcome those fear. This book is the account of Esad Boskailo, a Bosnian doctor who survived six concentration camps and went onto become a qualified psychiatrist in USA, written by Julia Lieblich. The book, a collaborative project of Esad Boskailo and human rights journalist Julia
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.
She learns to become more fearless while working with them to help the Jewish. Jesper and Stefen volunteer to stay behind to help their family and friends escape. They try to convince Lisa to stay behind with them because they do not have enough people, and because Lisa has a lot of experience with guns. Lisa was debating at first, saying “ I don’t know if I should stay. This is too dangerous, I’m not as good as Susanne with guns. You know that. I think all of us should just go on the boat. If the German soldiers find us, they will kill all of us” (90). After a while Lisa says that she will stay. Lisa, Jesper and Stefan stay behind to help all the Jewish get on the boat safely and in the course of 3 days Lisa has killed a total of 3 German soldiers. This is significant because throughout these tasks, Lisa and her mentors have successfully transferred the Jewish to the boats safely without being caught by the Nazis. Every Jewish people has escaped Denmark without being hurt. After this mission, Lisa learns to become fearless and now killing a person to her is very simple, unlike before, she could not even hold a gun properly. To conclude, with Lisa’s fearlessness, she is able to help the Jewish find their
Hermanns, William. The Holocaust: From a Survivor of Verdun, New York, NY, Harper and Row
"5th August 1942: Warsaw Orphans Leave for Treblinka." World War II Today RSS. n.p. n.d. Web.
Bard, Mitchell G., ed. "Introduction." Introduction. The Holocaust. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2001.
They all had to live in the Warsaw ghetto (“Children’s Diaries”). Halina, another child survivor, tells us what happened to her while in hiding. Halina and her family went into hiding with a friend of her mother in a basement (“Peabody”).... ... middle of paper ...
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
Upon entering the barbed-wire fenced confines of a ghetto, all hope was lost; it was a nightmare come true for the Jews. Promised with deceit as they were taken from their homes and carted away to hell on earth, the Jews faced great suffering as they tried in vain to survive. Death was in every nook and cranny, waiting for the next poor fallen soul. Many wished to be anywhere else, but this horrid and godforsaken place.
Sophie was a Polish women and a survivor of Auschwitz, a concentration camp established in Germany during the Holocaust in the early 1940s. In the novel we learn about her through her telling of her experiences, for instance, the murder of her husband and her father. We also come to learn of the dreadful decision she was faced with upon entering the concentration camp, where she was instructed to choose which one of her two children would be allowed to live. She chose her son. Later we learn of her short lived experience as a stenographer for a man by the name of Rudolph Hoss, the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. During her time there, Sophie attempted to seduce Hoss in an attempt to have her son transferred to the Lebensborn program so that he may have been raised as a German child. Sophie's attempt was unsuccessful and she was returned back to t...
This book left me with a deeper sense of the horrors experienced by the Polish people, especially the Jews and the gypsies, at the hands of the Germans, while illustrating the combination of hope and incredible resilience that kept them going.