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More handpicked essays just for you.
The Holocaust in short
The tragedy of the holocaust
The Holocaust and its affect on the world
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Six million Jews died in the holocaust. In The Devil’s Arithmetic, Hannah is tired of holiday gatherings. She is tired of always hearing about the past. But this year Passover seder will be different. Hannah will be mysteriously transported into the past. Jane Yolen used the motifs of Identity and Family to show the theme It’s important to know about the past. Like many Jews during the Holocaust, Hannah was robbed of her identity. Hannah starts to notices that when the women get their hair cut off, they are hard to tell apart. The lack of individuality was something the Nazi’s wanted to help dehumanize the Jewish population. The narrator states “But as the scissors snip-snapped through her hair and the razor shaved the rest, she realized with
After that hannah and others survive and go to a concentration camp where there are given food and some shelter. Hannah meets this girl who tells her to try not to get picked for the extermination they live their life being cushions and not getting caught or in other words taken.
The Book Thief and The Devil’s Arithmetic both focus on the prejudice Hitler had on different types of people during World War II. Liesel and Hannah both lost someone they had dearly loved. Liesel lost Rudy and Hannah lost many members of her family. In a time of fearfulness, both had told stories to the people surrounding them. Although both were not seen as equal in the eyes of many during their time, I see them as courageous and brave heroes after what they underwent.
Can you imagine yourself locked up in a room with no doors? Similar to a room with no doors, there is no way out of hell if it was one's destiny. In the short story "The Devil & Tom Walker" by Washington Irving, the main character's fate is hell because of his wrong decisions in life, accepting a deal with the devil for earthly benefits. Irving reinforces his message about not making decisions that may damn your soul with the use of literary elements and figurative language. Wisely, Irving combines characterization, mood and point of view to perpetuate the theme of the story in the reader's mind.
Sacrifice. Forced to work. Horrible conditions. Survival. All these things Hannah Goslar had to endure while she was fighting for her life during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the mass destruction of over 600 million Jews. Yet out of all those Jews only about 900,000 survived. Hannah Goslar was one of those 900,000 Jews put through the concentration camps and came out with their lives. Hannah Goslar is a strong, important survivor of the Holocaust because of the close relationship to Anne Frank, her life as a Jew, and her struggle in Bergan-Belson.
The Devil’s Arithmetic is a book and a movie that truly exposes what it was like for the Jewish people in Nazi Germany during the time of Hitler’s reign. The movie starts off with Hannah Stern, a teenage girl in the 1990s who is very rebellious. She is at a tattoo shop and her mother calls her because she is late for Passover Seder with her family. Hannah has no interest in her Jewish culture and does not want to go, but she is forced to. Somehow during the dinner she is transported to the 1940s to Germany during the time of Hitler and she and her cousin Rivka are captured by the Nazis and forced to work in concentration camps. She learns of the hardships her ancestors had to go through during their time in the camps and gains a respect for her family. Hannah saves her cousin by pretending she was Rivka when she coughed and she is brought to the gas chamber. In the end Hannah is brought back to present day and reunited with family, which she will never take for granted again.
In WWII during the Holocaust and it’s demoralization and yet it’s spectacle leading to great literature. Two divergent pieces of Holocaust literature inform us about the similar purposes, yet unlike tones, both authors using writing tools to drive their tones. Jane Yolen’s novel, The Devil's Arithmetic, shows us how it felt and feels to be in those harsh conditions in a death camp, yet has a tone of pride, empowerment, and honor and sacrifices. Peter Fischl’s poem, “To the Little Polish Boy Standing with His Arms Up,” is a salute to the ones that lived in the ghetto, but making the bystanders feel regret for what they could have done. His tone of voice is utterly powerful and yet distinct. Both authors showing their universal thought, and by asking us to be informed and reverence for their sacrifices.
Written in the era directly preceding the holocaust, High Holy Days, written from the perspective of a young girl, is more telling than is evident at first read. Themes of a young girls distance, and doubt pertaining to her religion are prominent throughout the piece.
In The Devil’s Arithmetic, Jane Yolen uses many tools and tones to suggest her feelings on the war. She uses her personal experiences, as she is Jewish and has Jewish family that was tortured by the Nazis. Her tones depict the foolish people who don’t acknowledge that this ever happened, and it honors those who lived in the death camps and especially those who lived. Along with that, she uses perfect words and repeated strong facts after
Written in the era directly preceding the holocaust, High Holy Days, written from the perspective of a young girl, is more telling than is evident at first read. Themes of a young girls distance, and doubt pertaining to her religion are prominent throughout the piece.
Throughout “I Have Lived a Thousand Years”, there is a universal theme that the physical and emotional strength gained from undergoing a tragedy is unbelievable. Elli has gained both, physical and emotional strength throughout her time in the Holocaust. Elli and the other prisoners experienced misery and hardships which made their bodies weary, but gave them the strength to survive. This is present in the following quote when Elli describes the reactions of the girls after being stripped of their clothes and losing their hair, “A burden is lifted. The burden of individuality. The burden of associations. Of identity. The burden of recent past. Girls who had continually wept since the separation from parents, sisters, and brothers, now keep giggling at their friends’ strange appearances—shorn heads, nude bodies, faceless faces” (78). At this point, the girls didn’t have anything else to lose. Finally, they were all equal. Rather than worrying about their appearance, it was an opportunity for them to breathe and come together as a whole. Now, all the girls had to worry about was survival and the other misfortunes they would face along the way.
There they encounter Tomasz’s mother who quickly expresses her distaste for Hannah, as she is a Jew. Tomasz soon must go and leaves Hannah with her, but as soon as the mother gets the opportunity, she, in a way, sets Hannah up to be found. When this fails, though, Hannah doesn’t say a word; she simply takes two things as she leaves, a dress from the wardrobe and a picture of Tomasz from the nightstand. Hannah takes the dress not only because she is in need of new clothes, but because she wants to express her anger towards her. Hannah could not protest her treatment at the concentration camp, but she is more than capable of showing defiance towards Tomasz’s mother. Hannah is tired of people treating her as lesser than, and this is her way of fighting against
Hannah’s reputation was destroyed by many people throughout the book. Her reputation is the cause of many things that lead her to end her life. Some of the reasons that she says some people made her end her life are more severe than others. Most of the people in the book only have interactions with Hannah because of her reputation. In school your reputation means a lot because what people hear about you is what they will think of you when your name comes up or they see you.
The Number Devil - A Mathematical Adventure, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, initiates with an adolescent child named Robert who experiences and suffers from recurring nightmares. Whether he’s getting gulped up by a huge fish, falling down an endless slide into a black hole, or falling into a raging river, his extremely detailed nightmares continually appear to have an undesirable effect on him. Robert’s nightmares either alarm him, make him irritated, or thwart him. His single request is to never dream again; instead of his nightmares coming to a stop, his dreams yield a shot for the bizarre. Instead of tumbling down holes, he encounters the Number Devil. Exercising oversized fuzzy calculators, heaps of coconuts, electronic glass boxes, and a
In this text, the character of Michael represents the ‘new’ Germany, the post war generation trying to come to terms with what the Holocaust generation did. Hanna, the representation of the ‘old’ Germany, causes Michael to feel guilty by entanglement. There is clear conflict and tension between Michael and Hanna which represents the conflict and tension between those directly involved in the Holocaust and the second generation in the context of moral responsibility. The guilt that Michael feels is the guilt of keeping the secrets of those who committed the crimes of the Holocaust. Certainly he loves Hanna and feels some solidarity toward her, and he never fully stops loving her, though later he reduces communication drastically. Yet she still plays a role in his life, and he wants her to play a role the he cannot extract himself from, just like the whole of Germany. But feelings of guilt arise from Michael having loved someone who committed such heinous
The Theme of Identity in Poetry These three poems are all to do with the theme identity although I specifically choose three that contrasted with each other. Digging is portraying the identity of the three generations of digging, his father, grandfather and himself. ‘Explain how three poems concerned with developing personality, develop their themes’ For this essay I will be choosing three poems, which will help me compare and contrast how each develop their themes of identity. The three I will be choosing are: 1. Digging Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests: snug as a gun.