Jewish Experience in "The Painted Bird" and "Mr. Sammler's Planet"

Bunting, Eve, and Stephen Gammell. Terrible Things: an Allegory of the Holocaust. Jewish Publication Society, 1989.

In paragraph five, he explains what he asked his father when he was a young boy: “I remember: he asked his father: “Can this be true? This is the 20th century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” This explains his feeling and from his point of view as he was a young boy. In paragraph nine, the author explains his emotions of suffering: “Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, the must-at the moment-become the center of the universe…” He expresses his feelings and emotions of suffering toward the Jews that were persecuted and all the lives that were lost . He explains when something bad happens, men or women being persecuted, it becomes the center of attention for what they need to focus

The major theme of the book is shown through the bonds of friendship and how in the most of unlikely circumstances friendship can survive and exist between people possessing an extensive and most restrictive division. A second theme is the evil and the intolerance which existed around these times of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, as seen by the Germans having the Jews in the concentration camp. And the third theme is the curiosity and innocence of Bruno, Shmuel and

The Holocaust was a major event that happened in history, causing death to around ten million people who suffered death from this tragic incident. The novel Night by: Elie Wiesel explains the perspective of what he suffered going through this situation. Elie Wiesel uses animal imagery, when explaining his point of view. They were treated as animals, significant use of the imagery helped his story and the purpose of it. Elie Wiesel uses animal imagery to paint an image to us of how they were treated, spoke to and used as if they were wild or barn animals, through the novel.

The Holocaust was a systematic genocide of the six million Jews and over nine million other Undesirables of Europe during World War II, spanning from 1933 to 1945. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel depicts the savagery of the concentration camps and with which the Nazis treated the inhabitants. Not surprisingly, not all the Jews were able to maintain their devotion to the religion that they loved and died for. The atrocities of the Holocaust made it inevitable for the Jews to question God and, for some like Elie, to eventually lose their faith.

The holocaust was a terrible period of punishment and abuse for many who were discriminated against, especially the jews. One of these jews was Elie Wiesel. He is the author of the book Night a autobiography on his life as a Jew in the Holocaust. Throughout the book Elie displayed many traits. Elie’s traits include loyalty, determination, and religiousness. The characterization of Elie the protagonist and the other characters plays a role in creating and supporting a theme in the novel Night. From reading the novel we can tell that Elie Wiesel's night shows that the holocaust was a very difficult time for jews and that it made them lose faith in god.

Imagine about 1.5 million of kids killed in the holocaust and up to 6 millions Jews died. The people in the holocaust has to question their faith of all the apprehension that made people grip on their faith in their crisis. Many Jewish people in the book Night, by Elie Wiesel had seen and been through the shocking horrors that shaken their faith. In the book people tried to survive the chamber while maintaining their faith. Shocking events that are currently happening in today's society that made people struggle to maintain faith they once had because of an act of violence, war, and death. In the book Night the theme “struggle to maintain faith” is admissible in today society.

Although we, as students, know the facts of the Holocaust, as it is taught in most history classes, the attention to detail is often overlooked. Night gives a shocking first-hand account of the horrors that the Jewish people faced at the hand of the Nazis. The personal thoughts of Wiesel give insight to how the Jewish people reacted to the situation of the concentration camps and how some lost their faith because of it. For example, it was stated, “Moishe was not the same. The joy in his eyes was gone. He no longer sang. He no longer mentioned either God or Kabbalah. He spoke only of what he had seen. But people not only refused to believe his tales, they refused to listen. Some even insinuated that he only wanted their pity, that he was imagining things. Others flatly said that he had gone mad.”

During the time of the Holocaust, many people didn’t know what was going on. This is because the world kept it secret, so that they would not cause any distress. It was an emotional time for those that figured out what happened, afterwards.

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor” (Thomas Jefferson). In the graphic novels Maus I: A Survivors Tale & Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman, he uses animal imagery to portray the predator-prey relationship that the Nazi regime shared with the Jewish population. Based on the alienation of the Jewish “race” albeit “not human” and the superiority that the rest of the populations begin to feel, these depictions of races, countries, and ethnicities as animals is both appropriate and effective to illustrate the various groups during the Holocaust. This resembles the Nazi belief that certain populations have a conventional character and will retain their inborn predator or prey status by characterizing the Jewish as Mice and the Nazis as Cats.

A powerful and provocative graphic novel, Maus, generates a Jewish individual’s life of grotesque and horror. With its ability of perception and interpretation, it tackles the main points of the ominous Holocaust and delivers a spooky aura to the absorbed audience. In comparison to Schindler’s List, the graphic novel shines brightly than the pale movie due to its realism and humor that is constantly present throughout the storyline. The novel has the ability to connect to the audience; thus, it gives an in-depth look and overall comprehension of the massacre that Spiegelman is trying to communicate. The graphic novel, Maus by Art Spiegelman, brings an honest account of the Holocaust to a wide audience because of its historical truth and intriguing viewpoints and characters that shows the effect and process of the genocide.

Eckardt presents the idea that the Holocaust was a result of three distinct factors; that it was the culmination of the church's teaching of contempt, the culmination of the church's absolute theology and finally the culmination of modern man's self-liberation from the shackles of God and morality .

“At The Mind’s Limit” is a series of essays written by Jean Amery, a German born Jew who survived the holocaust, who gives the reader a very interesting perspective into the mind of a persecuted Jew from 1935 forward. Amery does not consider himself a religious Jew or one who follows any Jewish traditions. In fact, he did not know that Yiddish was a language until he was 18. So Amery describes the events leading up to and following the holocaust through the eyes of an “intellectual” and tries to find out whether being an “intellectual” helped or hindered his mental and spiritual capacity as he experienced

In 1965, Jerzy Kosinski wrote his controversial novel “The Painted Bird”, which tells the story of a young six year old unnamed boy’s journey to survive during the violence and horrors of World War II. Kosinski shows readers how war can change people, as well as how barbaric human beings can act during wartime. During this time the Nazi sentiment was spreading like wildfire throughout central Europe. Hitler took great measures to ensure that Nazi’s remained in control by using cruelty and violence in creating fear and terror. Those living in Europe were far too scared to go against the Nazis’. The Jewish were not the only enemies of the Germans “Gypsies followed close behind... having no place in Adolf Hitler’s ideal of a racially pure

“Little white boy in shot trousers and a black man old enough to be his father flying a kite. It’s not everyday you see that”(Fugard 31). When together alone, Sam is like a father figure and Hally loves to follow his footsteps, more than his actual father. Sam loves to make Hally feel proud of himself or even of something in his life because it does not happen often because of his coarse, alcoholic father. In front of people however, it is like they really are who they are supposed to be; a white boy with his parents servant. When Sam and Hally went out in the park to go and fly the kite, Hally did not want to hold the string and run, because he was embarrassed to see the kite not fly and fall to the ground, another thing he cannot be proud of. “The miracle happened! I was running, waiting for it to crash to the ground, but instead suddenly there was something alive behind me at the end of the string, tugging at it as if it wanted to be free. I looked back . . . I still can't believe my eyes. It was flying. . . I was so proud of us”(Fugard 30)! For once in his his life, Hally felt so proud of himself because of this kite, that he did not want to bring it down. Wanting to sit there all day and just watch it soar in the sky. Sam wanted Hally to be proud of something, proud of himself, and he gave him the encouragement for