It was never easy for Karl Stern, a 14-year-old Jewish boy in the 1930’s. He was considered one of the worst kinds of jews because he didn’t look like one. However, his sister and dad did. The thing that hurts Karl the worst is, his family doesn’t even practice the Jewish religion. His family has to give up everything. Their school, their jobs, their house. Nothing that could really be replaced. As said before, it wasn’t easy for Karl Stern. However, Karl never gave up. He always knew in his heart that the worst things come to an end. This leads me to believe that the theme of The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow is to never give up hope. This theme is first introduced in chapter four. This is right after Karl got beat up by a group of kids (The Wolf Pack) in his school for being Jewish. Karl had no idea how to fight and was beat up pretty bad. So, when the famous Max Schmeling offered him private boxing lessons in return for a painting, Karl was quick to respond with a truthful answer, yes. Max told Karl that before he could box he had to be able to do the “300”. One hundred pushups, one hundred sit-ups, fifty pull-ups, and fifty minutes of running. In addition to this, Karl also had to shovel the coal for his building. He had to be able to this before he could learn how to box. …show more content…
He woke up at 5:30 A.M. each morning because he really wanted to do this. It wasn’t easy at first but soon it was getting easier and easier to do the “300”. “Yet as time passed, the shoveling got easier, and I felt new muscles forming on my arm, back, and shoulders” (pg. 71). Finally, Max Schmeling returned to Berlin and was ready to teach Karl. He was impressed how much stronger Karl was. Somewhere in his heart he knew Max was coming back which is why he continued his workout. If Karl gave up on boxing and Max he probably wouldn’t be as strong as he was. He probably would have stop working out and give up on becoming a boxer at
The story is a 3rd person view of a young boy called Georg who lived in Germany with his dad who was born in England and his mother born Germany. At the time all he wanted was to be a perfect boy in Hitler’s eyes which now wouldn’t be a good thing these days but at his time it would be all anyone ever
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.
The main character of the novel is a thirteen-year-old boy named Eliezer. He and his family were taken from their home and placed in a concentration camp. He was separated from his mother and sisters during the selection once they arrived in the camp. His father was the only family he had left with him to face the inhumane environment of the camp. Many of the prisoners lost the will to live due to the conditions.
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.
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.
My book Prisoner of Night and Fog by Anne Blankman is in the 1930s Munich about a girl named Gretchen Muller who falls in love with a Jewish reporter named Daniel Cohen.You might think thats so lovely but it’s not.Her uncle Dolf who is Adolf Hitler,he can’t stand the Jews he want the to be demolished and neither can her brother Reinhard,how I know is because one day Gretchen,Reinhard and his friend Kurt was going to the café to meet their uncle Dolf but on the way their Reinhard and his friend stopped and assaulted a Jew man when Gretchen tried to stop them her brother called her a ‘Jew Lover’.Gretchen lives in a boarding house with her mother.Gretchen wants to become a doctor but her dream will be on hold when her mom would want to get a full
The harshness of ghetto life and the constant fear of Nazi’s made resistance dangerous and difficult but not impossible.
Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.
Gwendolyn Brooks' "First fight. Then Fiddle." initially seems to argue for the necessity of brutal war in order to create a space for the pursuit of beautiful art. The poem is more complex, however, because it also implies both that war cannot protect art and that art should not justify war. Yet if Brooks seems, paradoxically, to argue against art within a work of art, she does so in order create an artwork that by its very recognition of art's costs would justify itself.
Even though once Jews were moved to concentration camps, it was hard to maintain a normal life, evidence from the camps reveals families stayed intact throughout this time of hardship. Families were often left without a father or child and still sought to keep living. There’s no better evidence of the Jew’s resiliency than the survivor’s willingness to set up families in the years immediately following the Holocaust.
The first thing that struck me in part two, was how the Jews were being told to identify themselves now by wearing special badges. To begin, the children in this particular scene talked about how their identity cards had come in the mail, on it there was a large red J, inside they would find what would become known as the “Jew badge”. All people of the Jewish faith had to wear stars, more specifically, the star of David. These yellow star badges signified that they were Jewish, it would become their new identity to others. By having them wear these yellow noticeable stars, they would be easily spotted by others, they would become isolated among the German citizens. The Jews would then be banned to certain areas, which they were not allowed to leave.
The Righteous and Harmonious Fists was an uprising against foreigners and Christians in Shandong. When the Yellow River burst in 1898, the people of north-eastern China were affected heavily. The flood led to crop failure and famine, which affected over 2 million people. After months of growing violence against foreigners and Christians in their country, the people in of north-eastern China got together to create an anti-Christian and anti-foreigner group called The Righteous and Harmonious Fists, today known as The Boxer Rebellion or The Boxer Uprising. The English decided to them ‘’Boxers’. The Boxer fighters believed in Buddhist and Daoist ideas that they were invulnerable to weapons and bullets. This secret society called for the return
Jews were like the blacks of Germany. They were mistreated and underestimated. In the years that led up to World War 2, the treatment of the Jews got worse and worse. In the 20’s Jews were normal, regular people who had another religion, but they would soon face another era of persecution and pain. Friedrich grew up with a rough life, a life that no one should live yet so many people in that time experienced.
The sport of boxing is known worldwide; a sport where men and women duke it out with their opponents to prove who is the toughest. Though-out the decades there have been many fighters and many fights, but few known quite as well as Cassius Clay, also known as Muhammad Ali. The fighter that referred to himself as, “the greatest” (biography.com) and a man that could, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” (about.com). From the beginning of his career, which was started after a police officer told him he might want to learn to fight, he was known as an underdog. He took on the Olympics in 1960 at the age of 18 and won the gold medal. Yet being a gold medalist wouldn’t help persuade the public view of him as a serious contender for the world heavy weight contender. Ali would fight as the challenger for the light-heavy weight world title against Sonny Liston on February, 25 1964. Clay would shock the world into no longer doubting him as serious opponent with a technical knock-out and continue to shock them with an announcement a day later.
In Nelly S. Toll’s memoir Behind the Secret Window, there are plenty of underlying messages and themes to remember throughout the book. This story of a young Polish girl takes you on the journey of her youth and describes how her family dealt with World War II. Many families such as Toll’s had to hide out for years on end and wait for a sign of safety from the horrible-spirited Nazis. These few years marked a truly depressing period of time for not only the Jewish community but for many other cultures as well. It was hard for anybody to keep hope within these ages because of all the negative things taking place. We can collectively gather the central idea from this text by using context clues and rhetorical devices. I agree strongly with the main concept that is developed over the course of the book that you should never give up hope no matter how hard life becomes. Nelly showed hope everywhere in this book by presenting emotional, credible, and logical appeals.