It was the year 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland. All of the Jews had to hide with Gentile families, or they would have been sent to concentration camps, an awful place where suffering and death was inevitable for the helpless Jewish men and women. The Jews who were fortunate enough to find a non-Jewish family that was willing to take care of them, spent several years hiding, staying away from windows and scurrying upstairs to the isolated bedroom whenever they heard footsteps. They spent years away from their family members and the outdoors in fear that they would be caught and killed. This is the life of Annie De Leeuw, our young, naive Jewish narrator. Johanna Reiss, the author of The Upstairs Room, goes into detail on what life was like if you were Jewish at the time she was a child. She was able to elaborate on certain details because she was the frightened, yet curious, girl in the book who went through all of the traumatic events. Johanna Reiss wrote this book from her own point of view, as an innocent minded, ten year old girl. She and her sister truly went into hiding during World War II, like Annie and Sini did in the book. The story behind the book lead to it becoming a Newbery Honor medal recipient in 1973. …show more content…
Unfortunately, for almost three years, Annie was not allowed to be a normal, raucous causing girl. She had to cut her hair and dress like a boy to ensure a safe arrival at the Gentile family´s house. She was to remain as quiet as she could and have no contact with anyone from outside of the household. Although, throughout the book, Annie made contact with a few other people, despite the danger of her even stepping outside the safety of the bedroom. Because of the confined space in the house and nowhere to be, Annie did not get a lot of exercising in throughout the day. Sini was on Annie about walking around the house, so she did not have a funny
Frank 's memoir explores a lot about childhood till adolescent development. Out of the family relations Anne Frank had as well as her physical development in an extremely difficulty environment, one can effectively analyze her life in the context of several child development theorists and concepts (Frank, 1997, p. 45). Powerful as well as poignant diarisitic memoir, Anne Frank’s work during her time with her family hiding in a little attic when Amsterdam was under Nazi occupation in the 2nd World War is highly regarded globally. Although Anne 's diary is often considered as an important document of childhood growth as well as discovery of a teenage girl, it has had an enormous effect as a narrative which details the difficulties Jewish citizens faced under the Nazi Party amid the most horrible years of the 2nd World War. Her honest portrayal of time in hiding, placed against the background war, offers a straightforward view into the most tragic period of human history.
This is a memoir called Night. Night is about a survivors view of the Holocaust. This survivor is Elie Wiesel. He is a Jewish-American professor at Boston University. He has written 57 books, including Night, based on his experiences as a prisoner in the Auschwitz, Buna, and Buchenwald concentration camps. Night starts out in his hometown Sighet, Transylvania. They started out as a happy family and Elie was studying more about his faith to become more with it. Then came the Germans. They gathered all of the Jews and put them into a ghetto. “New edicts were already being used. we no longer had the right to frequent restaurants or cafe, to travel by rail, to attend synagogue, to be on the streets after six o’clock in the evening. Then came the ghettos.” -Night ,page 11. They all were eventually put into cattle cars and then shipped off to the concentration camps.
Jeannine Burk was in danger and spent her childhood hiding from Nazis. One day when word had got around that Jews were in danger, Jeannine’s father took her on a street car to a house with people she didn’t even know to hide. This was the last time Jeannine saw her father. Jeannine hid in this house for 2 years. For this time she was mainly Occasionally, she was allowed to go outside and play but , only in the back yard.
In the 1930’s and 40’s, Jews were stripped of their identities and put into death camps by the Nazi soldiers. This is what happened to Elie Wiesel when he was only 15 years old. Elie and his family were captured and put into an extremely large death camp called Auschwitz. As soon as he and his family stepped through the gates, his mother and sister were murdered and Elie and his father were put to work. This memoir, Night, is a description of how Elie stayed alive in the camp and how he lost belief in his religion. When put into a horrible situation, it’s easy to lose faith.
The Holocaust is a horrific genocide that took the lives of 11 million people. In 1933, the Jewish population stood at over nine million. By 1945, the Germans had killed nearly 2 out of every 3 European Jews. One of the few survivors, Elie Wiesel, was able to create a memoir called “Night” about his trying times at the camps. In the story, a young jewish boy and his family get ripped from their home in Sighet and sent to horrendous concentration camps where most people's lives come to an end. During their time at the concentration camps, Elie, his father, and his fellow Jews are atrociously dehumanized by being starved, put through unrealistic amounts of physical activity, and having their identities revoked.
The innocent Jewish children and babies are “thrown into flames.” They were also “tossed into the air and used as targets for machine guns. (6)” The memoir Night retells the experience of a 15-year old Jewish boy, Elie, who spends many months in WWII concentration camps with his father Shlomo. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie and many others are dehumanized both mentally and physically.
Elie Wiesel, a pious boy, grew up in Sighet with his family until anti-Semitism imprisoned all Jews in ghettos skirted with barbed wire. The Jews of his town, were upbeat and grateful, despite the hard times, to be together as a religious community. Bronia’s Polish hometown of Kosowa was also separated into ghettos. When the Nazis planned to liquidate the ghettos, Bronia’s family hid away in a small 12x6 foot underground room with a pipe installed for air circulation, in contrast Elie’s family marched from their home with a few souvenirs to a destination of unknown fate. Each families’ decision resulted in two extremely different experiences, in which both struggle to survive through starvation, persecution, mental and physical abuse.
Each of these histories reveal a story of suffering that is endured by both Gentile and Jew, but also a story of humanity and salvation. In Five Chimneys: A woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz, Olga Lengyel tells of her family assisting other Jews fleeing the Nazi military. Later, after her own ordeals in Auschwitz, she was saved by citizens in a small Polish village. An essay written by Vera Laska is included in Women and the Holocaust: Different Voices, which is an anthology of essays about women in the Holocaust. In addition to the many stories of survivors and rescuers, I am using several scholarly articles
“Night” describes his personal experience in the concentration camp, where he was taken to being a boy. Germans forced Elie and other members of the Jewish community of Hungarian town Sighet to Ghettos. They left the whole families without any belongings and means to survive. But it was not enough: from Ghettos, people were transferred to concentration camps, where they were tortured and killed. But the book is not only about all the traumatic experiences that Jewish people had to withstand during World War II; it is about how poisonous and infectious xenophobia is.
Between Dignity and Despair, a book written by Marion A. Kaplan, published in 1998, gives us a portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany by the astounding memoirs, diaries, interviews with survivors, and letters of Jewish women and men. The book is written in chronological order of events, from the daily life of German Jewish families prior to when the Holocaust began to the days when rights were completely taken away; from the beginning of forced labor and exile to the repercussion of the war. Kaplan tries to include details from each significant event during the time of the Holocaust. Kaplan
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank is organized in chronological order and include the dates important to the Jewish author. On Anne’s thirteenth birthday, she receives a diary she calls “Kitty,” and this is where she records events that happened to her. Anne includes writings about her brief normal life and the life in the “Secret Annex.” She and her family are hiding from the Gestapo during WWII. As the story progresses, more Jews join the Franks. There is great conflict between Anne and the rest of the residents, though sometimes her father is “darling.” After a little more than two years in hiding, the German police discovered the secret Jews and sent them into labor camps, where Otto Frank was the only survivor. Anne matures and finds Peter at her side, even though there is tension between the other Van Daans and herself. Not only is there conflict between Mrs. Van Daan, but with Anne’s own mother and her roommate, Mr. Dussel.
“We must tell people, Corrie. We must tell them what we learned,” said Betsie. The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, is the biography of a woman in Holland during the Holocaust. The book starts out in 1937, in Haarlem, Holland. Corrie and her family were Christians who hid Jews from persecution by the German soldiers. Corrie was forced to make decisions and take actions all throughout different periods in her life. When her mother fell ill, she learned to care for someone who couldn’t do anything for her. During the time when the family was hiding the Jews, she was forced to be brave and strong. Finally, when her family was taken to the concentration camps, Corrie, with the help of her sister
The Holocaust is a very large topic with many subtopics within, which many people have never heard of. One in particular is the Hidden Children of the Holocaust. Like a majority of individuals, I never heard of this topic before, until I started my inquiry work. Hiding children during the holocaust was an effort to save thousands of children’s lives. The children were hidden in different ways, either with false identities, underground, and with or without their parents. The children with false identities were allowed to participate in everyday life activities, like attend school and socialize with children their age, which in the long run this lead to less emotional and mental issues. However, the children that were hidden and not allowed to leave their hiding spots often faced boredom, pain, and torment. Some children were capable of being hid with their parents while other children were not. Depending on the situation the child was in, depends on the effects it had on the child during this time. In this paper, I will be discussing works by two scholars, Natalia Aleksiun’s Gender and Daily Lives of Jews in Hiding in Eastern Galicia and Judy Mitchell’s Children of the Holocaust. Aleksiun’s article talks about the daily lives of Jews in hiding and also about how they prepared their hideouts. Aleksiun’s article mainly focuses on children that were hidden with their families. In Mitchell’s article, he focuses on the hidden children and gives examples/survivor stories on what it
Thirteen year old Anne Frank is stuck in an attic for 2 years during World War II. This can sometimes take a toll on one's personality. Anne Frank's book titled "The Diary of Anne Frank" takes people through what it was like to be a Jewish teenager during World War II. Anne and her family was forced to move into hiding, because of the harsh measures being taken by Nazis to rid Europe of Jews. During Anne's time in the annex, readers get to know her well, as she changes from the beginning, to the end of her time in hiding. While Anne at the beginning is different from Anne at the end, she still is consistent in some of her personality traits throughout the entire book. When the tyranny of Hitler began, Anne’s concerns changed, along with
Thesis: Today I will discuss the young and short life of one of the most well known Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was acknowledged for her quality of writing. Her diary is one of the world’s most widely read books and there has been many plays and films written on the basis of her story.