The Devil 's Arithmetic By Donna Deitch

The Holocaust did not happen like a movie; it is impossible to recreate fully the horrific and grotesque events that occurred. However; in Spielberg’s telling of a true story from the Holocaust, it strived for historic accuracy and exemplified realism to Hollywood’s

The Devil’s Arithmetic is gripping book that grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go. It is a book to helps children of this generation remember the horror the Nazis caused. It is important for us to remember the past. We should always try to remember. This book is to remember the chilling tale furthermore.

The film that made an impression on me because of its techniques that were effective in showing the themes of the story was The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas. It was directed by Mark Herman, 2008 and is about an adventurous little German boy whose father gets a promotion to be commandant at a concentration camp. The little German boy, Bruno is the naive narrator. In spite of the fact that this film depends on the Holocaust and all the great degree brutal things that happened in the second world war, the movie is based around Bruno's understanding as a child and his friendship with a little Jewish boy, Shmuel. The techniques I write about that illustrate the themes of the film are; dialogue and music, acting, costume, camera shots, and symbolism.

The Holocaust was a distressing time in history and is not a story everyone can absorb. Both the book, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas written by John Boyne and the film, Life is Beautiful, directed by Robert Benigni, are based upon the real life events of the Holocaust but with a difference. They made clever use of different techniques to dim and censor the reality of the events and interpret it in a more tolerable way. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas depicts the life of a young nine year old boy named Bruno who is the son of the Commandant of the Auschwitz

In the movie Schindler's List, the story of the Holocaust is told from a dual point of view; that of the Jewish people who are downtrodden,

Hannah has experiences in the story that change her. In chapter three, Hannah drank watered down wine for the first time. Hannah also got drunk. “ Uncle Sam poured another quarter glass of wine into her glass, then filled it the way with water for the next blessing.” this was on page 16. This experience is a huge role in the story because it causes her to fall asleep and have to crazy dream. Another quote is when Hannah says “I'm not Chaya.” On page 34, “I'm from New Rochelle. And I'm not Chaya, I'm Hannah’ When Shmuel’s eyebrows rose up and lines furrowed his brow, he looked so fierce Hannah moved back a step” Rivka explains to Hannah that she was sick and probably forgot. Hannah has many experiences in the story that change her.

Genocide is the destruction of an ethnic, racial, or religious group. The most famous genocide, conducted by the Germans, is the extermination of the Jewish population known as the Holocaust. There are other genocides such as the Armenian or Darfur genocide, but the Holocaust is the one talked about and studied the most around the world today. Museums exist in Washington D.C, Los Angeles, and parts of Europe that focus primarily on this dark time in history. Vast amounts of books, movies, and documents concentrate on the Holocaust. Why is this chapter, between 1939 and 1945, discussed and examined? The answer lies within people who experienced the Holocaust such as Elie Wiesel, Jay Frankston, and Franks Shatz. These men have gone through hell and back, but they believe in one thing. That is, the notion of never again. The goal is to educate future generations on what really happened, so history does not repeat itself. Never again should people of any race, religion, or ethnicity, go through the horrific past of the Holocaust. In their writing, Wiesel, Frankston, and Shatz do a great job using pathos, logos, and ethos to convey their message of never again for future generations.

The statement that, “ The most widely seen films about the holocaust tend to focus on the mystery of goodness rather than the horror of mass murder,” can be seen as a true statement, but a very skewed one. The reason that we see this patterning is the fact that many of the personal stories (by survivors) come from two split paths, those who survived through an extermination camp and those who survived outside of one. These extermination camps led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and those people's lives were lost along with their stories. Many documentaries tend to focus on the people that were detained in an extermination camp during the Second World War. Documentaries tend to focus on the horror of the mass murder in the extermination

     I think the director did a great job in filming this movie. He didn’t take any credit for his achievement but I believe he honored and remembered the victims of the holocaust. One of the most important lines of this film that really impacted me was “who will be our next executioners?” The reason why I loved this line is because we make little things so trivial and we take everything for granted. Our liberties are a blessing and yet people don’t seem to realize this. I believe that only when we are faced with a natural catastrophe that will put humanity’s survival at risk and we lose everything that will be the day that we will have gained all.

Overall, the film did exactly what any good dramatic film would do and that is make the audience feel something. The tragedy of the Holocaust has never been fictionally depicted from a German child’s view until this movie. The depiction of how a child who is protected from certain elements war might have thought in that era makes this film unique. The unbelievable conclusion is what makes this film unforgettable. The most important scene in the film is the ending, when Bruno

The Holocaust is the world’s most dehumanizing incident that occurred from the years 1933 to 1945. It was a racial injustice in which Jews, along with people seen as inferior, were persecuted by the German Nazi’s. Author Elie Wiesel and director Steven Spielberg both do excellent jobs at educating an audience of the horrors people experienced during this time. In Wiesel’s novel Night, the Holocaust is shown from a Jewish boy’s perspective as Elie struggles to survive the torment of several concentration camps. Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List shows the Holocaust from a German Nazi’s perspective, as Oscar Schindler faces an internal struggle while attempting to protect several Jews. The stories share numerous similarities along with differences, however, when it comes down to which is a better representation of the Holocaust, Night will come out on top due to Wiesel’s first hand experiences inside the camps.

In the devil's arithmetic by Jane Yolen and the movie by Dustin Hoffman the main message that they are trying to throw at us is that we have to remember. We have to remember that some evil person condemned 6 million jews to death because

There are many tragic events that have happened in history and one of them is The Holocaust. The book Night written by Elie Wiesel is based on him, a Holocaust survivor, and his experience in the concentration camps. There is also an article titled “Wiesel Offers Students First-Hand Account of Holocaust” by Louis Sahagun that is about Elie Wiesel speaking to students on his involvement with The Holocaust. The film Life is Beautiful is based on The Holocaust as well. It tells the story of a family in the concentration camps. The book Night, the article “Wiesel Offers Students First-Hand Account of Holocaust”, and the film Life is Beautiful share a common message of how families were affected during The Holocaust.

Throughout the film Image Before My Eyes, directed by Josh Waletzky, viewers are shown videos, pictures, and interviews regarding European Jewry from the late 1910’s to the 1930’s. Though this is a film explaining the events and upheavals that led up to the Holocaust, the word Holocaust is rarely ever mentioned. It is through the use of multimedia in this film that the devastating history of the Holocaust becomes illuminated. The film allows the viewer to begin to fathom the destructive events that occurred between the two World Wars as well as the secularization of daily life for Jews throughout this time period.

‘Schindler’s List’ is no less a “Jewish story” or a “German story” than it is a human story. And its subject matter applies to every generation.’ [Stephen Spielberg] Discuss.