Gerda Weissmann, Kurt Klein, and families endured horrible things under Nazi rule and throughout World War II; such as: famine, work labor, and a great deal of loss. Gerda’s memoir All But My Life and Kurt’s appearance in America and the Holocaust explain the hardships of their young lives and German Jews. One was able to escape, one was not; one lost everything, the other living with a brother and sister in a new and safe place. The couples’ stories are individually unique, and each deal with different levels of tragedy and loss.
Throughout the Holocaust, Gerda was worked to the bone. She was tossed from labor camp to labor camp. When Gerda would stay in a labor camp she would be worked as hard as possible by the German people. Within the work camps, she and other workers were only given a small ration of food per day or week.
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He followed his sister and was trailed by his brother to America. “After that, the Statue of Liberty came into view and I had a sense that I was personally secure. I had done what the Nazis wanted me to do, namely, leave Germany.” Kurt explains this while telling his story in America and the Holocaust. Unfortunately, the fear did not stop there. The German’s did everything they could to keep all the Jews in their territory by making other countries deny Jews. The Kline parents were still in Europe and would never make it overseas to safety. “I 'll never forget November of 1942. It was the time when I was drafted into the American Army, which gave me a measure of pride to be serving the country that was fighting this evil. It was also good to know that I was finally doing something concrete - however small that might be - that would help in that effort.” This is the start of change for Kurt. He was given the opportunity to be able to fight back at this situation no one knew how to fix. Joining the army gave him pride in himself, and America for fighting
Gerda Weissmann Klein is a Holocaust survivor that was born in Bielsko, Holand. She went through the misery of knowing what pain and suffering is. When she was 15, the Germans took over Bielsko and that is when everything started happening. On April nineteenth of 1942, the Jews were asked to move to the ghetto. Then they were forced to work in work camps and Gerda and her parents got separated. Later she went to a concentration camp, a 5 month death march. Stating of what this teenager (now woman) went through, Gerda was very qualified to write this book, knowing what actually happened inside the camps.
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
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.
It is almost unimaginable the difficulties victims of the holocaust faced in concentration camps. For starters they were abducted from their homes and shipped to concentration camps in tightly packed cattle cars. Once they made it to a camp, a selection process occurred. The males were separated from the females. Then those who were too young or too old to work were sent to the showers. Once the showers were tightly packed, the Nazi’s would turn on the water and drop in canisters of chemicals that would react with the water and release a deadly gas. Within minutes, everyone in the shower would be dead. The bodies would be hauled out and burned. Those who were not selected to die didn’t fair much better. Terrible living conditions, forced labor, malnourishment, and physical abuse were just a few of the things they had to endure. It was such a dark time. So many invaluable lessons can be learned from the holocaust and from those who survived it. One theme present in Elie Wiesel’s novel Night and Robert Benigni’s film Life is Beautiful is that family can strengthen or hinder one during adversity.
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.
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.
It is a miracle that Lobel and her brother survived on their own in this world that any adult would find unbearable. Indeed, and appropriately, there are no pretty pictures here, and adults choosing to share this story with younger readers should make themselves readily available for explanations and comforting words. (The camps are full of excrement and death, all faithfully recorded in direct, unsparing language.) But this is a story that must be told, from the shocking beginning when a young girl watches the Nazis march into Krakow, to the final words of Lobel's epilogue: "My life has been good. I want more." (Ages 10 to 16) --Brangien Davis
During the Holocaust six million Jews lost their lives, while others lost their friends, family and dignity. Helen Waterford discusses her survival in the novel Parallel Journeys . Through Helen Waterford’s journey to hide, survive, and rejoin society, she realizes that she cannot dwell on what has happened to her but learn and become wise from what she has endured.
In 1940, Hungry annexed Sighet and forced Wiesel to lived in ghetto where is several jewish families on aggregate.At the ages of 15, 1944, the Nazi Germany entered Hungry with a purpose which is exterminate 600000 Jews in 6 weeks. The cruel and “bloody” Holocaust began. Wiesel and his family was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.Wiesel and his father
Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.
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.
“My mind was so dull, my nerves so worn from waiting, that only an emotionless vacuum remained” (213). Gerda Weissman Klein was one of the few fortunate Jews to survive the Holocaust and tell her story. She explains her tragic story through her own her memoir called “All But My Life”. Gerda made it through the Holocaust because of her loving family, loyal friends, and intuition of her own.
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
I learned many things throughout the Holocaust unit. First of all, I learned about the different victim groups of the holocaust. I knew that Jews were targeted, but I didn’t know about the others, including the roma, homosexuals, and the disabled. It surprised me that they would target the disabled because that is just how the people were born, and they weren’t creating any threat to Germany. I also didn’t know that America was a part of the war for only one year. This