Maja Melkisedek: A Short Story

Everyone has heard of the holocaust and learned about it in history class, but there is no way that anyone could even imagine how terrible it was unless they experienced it themselves. After reading, “The Boy on the Wooden Box”, by Leon Leyson, it is clear that the author’s tone throughout the story is one of pain and agony. The story Leon tells is about his family’s journey during the holocaust, and all the physical and emotional pain that they went through, but also how lucky they were to have survived.

“The Shawl” by Cynthia Ozick is short story in which a mother, her child, and her niece are described as they walk through a concentration camp during the Holocaust. This work is well known for its prominent use of figurative language. For a story about the Holocaust, it may seem odd as to why this language was used instead of a factual style of writing which is common in these types of stories. Ozick uses figurative language excessively in attempt to describe such a horrific situation. Some may criticize the author and even take offense to the way the story was written, but it does not have the same effect when told differently. Most accounts of the Holocaust are hard to comprehend, even for those who experienced it themselves. Ozick stated in an interview that even if everyone “were to spend the next five thousand years absorbing and assimilating the documents, it still

As the enforcements of the Holocaust start appearing in Wiesel’s hometown, his father’s behavior begins to slowly change, making it easier for Wiesel to connect with him. While watching other families being deported, Wiesel, his father, and the rest of his family witness the Hungarian Police strike old men and women, without reason, with truncheons, for the first time. The next day, as they are being deported from the ghettos, Wiesel writes, “My father wept. It was the first time I had ever seen him weep. I had never imagined that he could” (16). Wiesel’s prior belief that his father was emotionless is proven to be wrong before they even arrive at the concentration camps. Wiesel is able to relate to his father in this moment, for he too is terrified of what lies ahead. As Wiesel and his family arrive at Birkenau, the Nazis

Once the family has been evacuated and are on a train to an internment camp, the daughter takes over as narrator and represents a different impression of the Japanese Americans. The

During the Holocaust, the Nazis did not stop at simply asserting their own superiority over the Jews; they stripped them of their sense of self and individuality and reduced them to the numbers they had tattooed on their arms. The theme of inhumanity is common in every story and every memory recounted in the memoir. Night makes you question the power of humanity. It makes you wonder how ordinary human beings could bring themselves to commit the kind of horror that we now deem unthinkable. But then again, people say that the most human thing of all is cruelty. And every family destroyed, every instance of torture and every life lost is

Being a prisoner of war can change a person, dramastically. World war two, one of the most devastating wars; over fifty million people died, and yet this number is just a roundabout. One main factor, called the Holocaust, the extermination of six million Jews, gays, and anything German’s deemed unfit. Based on a true story, we venture through the mind of a young Jewish boy named Elie. Elie one day was taken from his home, and sent to a German concentration camp known as Auschwitz. Elie is soon to realize that this place is no joking matter. Through the process of selection, the disassemblement from his loved ones, and the deportation of saved ones to specialized camps, Elie questions his faith in God, himself, and his welfare of family members.

When authors write about World War II, most set their stories in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, but few would give a moment of thought to the atrocities perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army in East Asia and the Pacific region. However, Laura Hillenbrand has brought us this heavily neglected side of the tragedy. By following the vicissitudes of a USAAF lieutenant named Louis Zamperini in her bestseller “Unbroken”, she pays tribute to all ex-POWs and soldiers that lost their lives on the Asian battlefield.

World War 2 was an era characterized by crimes against humanity. Two first-hand accounts of these injustices are detailed in Night by Elie Weisel and Desert Exile by Yoshiko Uchida. Miles away from each other, the two faced similar experiences, one for religious and one for racial reasons. While Weisel’s experience was much more extreme, the physical and psychological effects seen in both situations are similar. When basic human rights are stripped away, the victims of such abuse are open to any number of physical and psychological effects, including loss of faith and emaciation. Weisel and Uchida were wrongfully taken from their homes and treated as if they were less of a person than their captors, and this left a permanent emotional

“War loves to seek its victims in the young,” Sophocles. When you read the novels Night, by Elie Wiesel, and Between Shades of Gray, by Ruta Sepetys, you may ponder and realize the true meaning of that quote. Eluding the fact that the children weren’t targeted directly, wars and disputes between countries, or in a country itself, can tear up every citizen in said location. Although the stories of Elie Wiesel and Lina Vilkas are similar in the pain they endured, there were some differences such as: the camps in which they were relocated, the reason they were both sent away, and the people they were left to be with in the camps, as well as their purpose there.

The author at 16 years old was evacuated with her family to an internment camp for Japanese Americans, along with 110,000 other people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast. during the time in the camps he struggled for survival and dignity, and endured psychological scarring that has lasted a lifetime.

Has it ever dawned upon you how a twelve year old boy might have experienced the Holocaust? In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Mr. Wiesel told his story, leaving us with an astonishing and vehement view to what it was like to be sent to a concentration camp at the young age of twelve. To enhance the powerful effect of the book, a multitude of motifs were utilized, although one was undeniably conspicuous: The dehumanization of the Jews. The book was a full chronicle of one young man’s experience of the Holocaust, which included multifarious occurrences of the horrors Jewish prisoners were put through, ultimately removing the essence of their humanity. Symbolism was incorporated into this motif, in which Mr. Wiesel showed how one’s eyes not

Commonalities can be pulled from the use of propaganda and revenge to indoctrination and even inspiration. These children did not require eloquence. Their refuge was found often after months of running, witnessing countless atrocities and feeling the helpless vulnerability of having no security in their lives. If the war did not kill these children out rightly, starvation would. As we read in these sobering memoirs even those who, like Ismael Beah, survived the lack of food, protection and stability still fell victim to the death of their childhood, their families and all the things that should have formed their identities as adults. Lost in revenge that hardened their souls, drugs that dulled their emotions and alter egos who encouraged their violent acts these child soldiers were truly lost to the war that took all they held dear. Though Ishmael Beah could be considered one of the lucky ones, his personal losses were no less severe than a sort of death “All the way up to the neck there are bullet holes. . . I lift the cloth from the body’s face. I am looking at my own” (Beah 19). This book gives insight into a culture, time, and events that would be impossible to adequately capture in a history book. Too often we read such stories as fiction. Perhaps it is a defense mechanism of the mind that ensures protection over the reader that one can read of a horrific event and later run errands and make dinners. Upon reading Beah’s book, it seems impossible to remain distant from Ishmael’s plight. He is not an ambiguous character in history; he suddenly becomes a son, a brother or a friend. This is a valuable perspective, especially for those who enjoy security and plentiful resources as most Americans do. In spite of the unsettling nature of this book, perhaps even because of it, there is importance in reading and understanding it not only in the context of these events of war in Sierra Leone but also in a grander context of a

“A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load - little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it with my own eyes… those children in the flames.” (Elie Wiesel, 24) This memoir, told by Elie Wiesel in his book “Night” and published in 1956, describes his experiences surviving the Holocaust. He and his father are forced to endure extremely traumatic experiences. Throughout “Night”, there are moments that are incredibly powerful. These moments are powerful because it really shows how horrible the Holocaust was, and the terrors not only Elie went through, but that almost all Jewish people experienced.

As long as there has been war, those involved have managed to get their story out. This can be a method of coping with choices made or a way to deal with atrocities that have been witnessed. It can also be a means of telling the story of war for those that may have a keen interest in it. Regardless of the reason, a few themes have been a reoccurrence throughout. In ‘A Long Way Gone,’ ‘Slaughterhouse-Five,’ and ‘Novel without a Name,’ three narrators take the readers through their memories of war and destruction ending in survival and revelation. The common revelation of these stories is one of regret. Each of these books begins with the main character as an innocent, patriotic soldier or civilian and ends in either the loss of innocence and regret of choices only to be compensated with as a dire warning to those that may read it. These books are in fact antiwar stories meant not to detest patriotism or pride for one’s country or way of life, but to detest the conditions that lead to one being so simpleminded to kill another for it. The firebombing of Dresden, the mass execution of innocent civilians in Sierra Leone and a generation of people lost to the gruesome and outlandish way of life of communism and Marxism should be enough to convince anyone. These stories serve as another perspective for the not-so-easily convinced.

On the other hand, her father died when she was ten and she still saw him as this massive man standing at the blackboard with a cleft chin and a soft heart, but as she grew older, she became more aware of her father’s truth. He was a Nazi who spent his days working to round up Jews and working under Hitler. For the rest of her life, she racked her brain