Yellow Star: Syvia's Life In Lodz Ghetto

The Yellow Star was a patch the Jews were forced to wear, this patch had a significant importance during the Holocaust, and the Yellow Star helped the Nazi identify the Jews during the Holocaust.

Vladek is depicted as a hero who shows countless acts of selflessness and generosity and a villain who is, “opinionated, tight-fisted, and self-involved”. (Brown 6) Art Spiegelman’s book Maus, tells the story of how Vladek and Anja Spiegelman survived the Holocaust. Spiegelman illustrates Vladek as a man who single-handily saved his family from starvation and Auschwitz in World War I. During Spiegelman’s interviews, we get an idea of Vladek’s darker side since the war ended. Mala to speak of her astonishment and disgust in Vladek’s character. Which leaves us to question how truthfully these stories are being told. In the end, Vladek’s unsuccessful heroism is a constant reminder of his failure; survival with Anja was always easier, after her death, Vladek pushes everyone away with his “guilt and manipulation” (Brown 7)

“It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” (Anne Frank) Anne Frank was one of the many children who fell victim to the Holocaust during the World War II. Anne’s story is nothing short of a tragedy; she died at the early age of fifteen from Typhus while being held by the Nazi Regime, in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Before dying, Anne and her family went into hiding and lived secretly in her father's office building in the Netherlands. While living in the “Annex,” a secret hiding place, she developed many interests such as reading and writing. Anne is famous because she is one of the best-known victims of the Holocaust, her story has been shared with millions in a publication of her diary, and through her writing’s she introduces many people to the massacre and its horror.

Born in Poland, Henia Weit was the youngest of nine children in her family. She lived in a town by the name of Sambor. Unfortunately, the town was bombarded by German soldiers shortly after Hitler started his reign of terror on the Jews. Henia’s family was forced to do laborious work in a ghetto until they were all deported to a concentration camp. Fortunately for Henia, she was able to escape and never went to the concentration camp herself. Instead, she had to survive for several years alone, with only her sister to turn to.

Sara faces a number of serious hindrances on her way to making a life of her own. One of them is her father, who she looks up to and starts to resent later on in life. Her father, Red Smolinsky wants his all daughters to fulfill their gender roles: maintain the household, take care of children, cook, etc. Women, in his opinion, do not exist without men and their own function is to serve men in all senses – sexual, psychological and spiritual. Red Smolinsky represents the Old World with its conservative view on the womanhood. She also starts to hate her father when she understands the ways he has denied his daughters, her older sisters, lives of their own. Sara tries to resist this “new” world and her

As a mother your biggest mission in life is to be a protector and everything that your children will ever need and that’s exactly what Sonia was. June 30, 1941 Nazis gained control of the town Zhetel, a small town in Poland that Sonia and her family resided in. The Nazis immediately began to persecute the Jewish population. On July 23, 1941, the Nazis executed 120 prominent Jews. Among those innocent lives was Sonias brother. On February 22, 1942, the Germans ordered that all the Jews in Zhetel be forced into a ghetto called among these names: The Zdzięcioł Ghetto, Dzyatlava Ghetto or Zhetel Ghetto. Two months later they rounded up and killed about 1000 Jewish residents. After this first slaughter, on April 30, a few dozen people escaped from the ghetto into the nearby woods and began to organize into partisan groups. On August 6, 1942, the Germans began the final liquidation of Zhetel. Sam, Sonias husband, was rounded up in a mass sweep of the town and locked together with hundreds of other Jews in the town's synagogue. In the middle of all the confusion, he and a few others hid for about two days and nights. Once it was quiet, they escaped into the woods and joined up with the Jewish Partisans. Meanwhile Sonia hid with her two children in a hiding place her husband established soon after World War 2. They would stay there for three nights with other friends and family until the Nazi massacres

"The Diary of Anne Frank" tells us a story about how her life as a Jew was drastically changing during the Holocaust and the start of World War II (WWII). She was a very intelligent young woman that had hopes and dreams. Anne was a normal teenager trying to find her way in life. All of that changed when the Nuremburg Race Laws were formed. Her father who was a World War I fighter hid his family and friends in a Secret Annex that was blended in with a normal neighborhood. As she lived for months in the Secret Annex, Frank had written her diary, full of her experiences in the Annex. Everything changed though, when she reached the end of her times in the Annex. Hitler's men had found Anne and her family and friends. This memoir adds in to the

How did the Jews keep their spirits alive? The Jews had went through some hard times during the Holocaust. Jews were forced to live and work in concentration camps until they had died. They found a way to overcome their hardships and still try to get their happiness.

When Stein, a forgotten relative, approached Eliezer and his father on their eight day of living in the concentration camp, Auschwitz, he wanted information on his wife and two kids whom Eliezer's mother had corresponded with in the past. Stein and his family had been separated two years ago and he desperately wanted to know how they were doing. While Eliezer did not have any knowledge about Stein's family, caught between indecision, he decided to lie. He

Gerda was 15 when she was moved into a ghetto called the Bielsko ghetto in 1939 ,September 1. Gerda had an older brother who was 19. But that changed when young men 16 and up had to sign up for the army. Now it was just Gerda and her parents. Then german fighter planes appeared overhead, causing people to flee the city. Her family remanded in the town. In the morning, she heard intense shouting and saw Nazi’s on motorcycles shouting “Heil Hitler”. One day women and men were separated and asked to be put in lines. Gerda was in the line with her mother and a guard asked her how old she was and she said, “18”. Then she was put in a truck a shouting at her mother to ask where she was going and her mother said she didn’t know. Gerda jumped out of the truck but a SS officer caught her and said to her that she was too young to die. Then she knew that her mother was going to die. After Gerda being moved into the ghetto she was deported in 1942 to work in a factory in Bolkenhain, Silesia. Besides the of all the labor and hunger there was caring caring between the inmates. A German supervisor, Mrs. Kugler, saved Gerda’s life because when Gerda got sick and the SS men had to inspected her to see if she should continue working or die. Mrs. Kugler helped her pass the Inspection by just letting her work and then rest again. She was moved to a camp called Marzdorf and spent three years there. It

The poem 'Shooting Stars' by Carol Ann Duffy tells a shocking story of a female prisoner held by Nazis in a concentration camp around the time of the Holocaust. The poem is set in 1940, Hitler and his Nazi party had taken control of most of Europe and had vowed to exterminate the entire Jewish race. Duffy's haunting use of imagery and word choice make this poem so memorable and its very strong opening prepares the reader for the rest of the poem.

However, there was no real uniformity to these ghettos. The ghettos usually varied with respect to the size of the city in which they were located. The ghettos in small towns were generally not sealed off, which was often a temporary measure used until the Jewish occupants could be sent to a bigger ghetto. Larger cities had closed ghettos, with brick or stone walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire defining the boundaries. In the larger ghettos, guards were strategically placed at gateways and other boundary openings for policing the area. In these larger ghettos, Jews were not allowed to leave the Jewish residential districts (Holocaust),under penalty of severe punishment, often including death. As mentioned earlier, all of the ghettos had the most appalling, inhuman living conditions. The smallest ghetto housed about 3,000 Jews. Warsaw, probably the largest ghetto, held close to 400,000 people. Lodz, the second largest, held about 160,000 (Phillips 304-12). Other areas (mainly Poland) with large Jewish ghettos included Bialystok, Czestochowa, Kielce, Krakow, Lublin, Lvov, Radom, and Vilna(a history 170). Many of the ghetto dwellers were from the local area; others were from neighboring villages. In October 1941, general deportations began from Germany to major ghettos in Poland and further east. Also, Jews from Austria and the

"On July 16 and 17, 1942, 13, 152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the suburbs, deported and assassinated at Auschwitz. In the Vélodrome d' Hiver that once stood on this spot, 1,129 men, 2,916 women, and 4,115 children were packed here in inhuman conditions by the government of the Vichy police, by order of the Nazi occupant. May those who tried to save them be thanked. Passerby, never forget” (De Rosnay 60). In the book Sarah’s Key, it begins with a young girl named Sarah Starzinsky, who is dealing with her family being removed by the French police and put into a camp. Before the family left, Sarah puts her brother into a closet and locks him in to where he will not come out until she comes back. However, Sarah and her family did not realize that they were not

After a little more than a year living in Auschwitz, the mom couldn’t take anymore. She didn’t want to leave in isolation anymore so she started to plan to leave the city.

Between 1933 and 1945, 11 million people were murdered in the Holocaust, of this six million were Jews and of this, 1.1 million were children. Of the nine million Jews who lived in Europe before the Holocaust, an estimated 2/3 were murdered. Despite all these odds and statistics, Vladek Spiegelman managed to survive, and then share his story with his son, so he could share their story with the world. Another reason that Vladek Spiegelman is a good subject to write a biography on is, his personality. He seems to have to sides to him, Vladek Spiegelman before war and Vladek Spiegelman post - war. We get to see the impact and affect the Holocaust had on it’s victims, with our own eyes. Moreover, Vladek Spiegelman is an inspiration and a reminder of the potential dark side to human nature. Thus, writing a biography on Mr. Spiegelman is informative, moving and above all, inspirational.