In the year of 1933, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Nazis, who came to power in Germany, had the belief that the Jewish members of society were racially inferior. With this thought in mind, the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, organized what would be known as The Final Solution. In 1933, the European population consisted of over nine million Jewish members. By the end of the Holocaust in 1945, the German-Nazi Party “killed nearly two out of every three European Jews” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016). During the years of the Holocaust, the Jews, and other groups persecuted by the Nazi’s such as homosexuals and the mentally challenged, were forced into concentration camps where they would either be deemed …show more content…
In Englander’s literary work, “Free Fruit for Young Widows” (2010), he tells a story of two men, Shimmy Gezer and Private Tendler who later becomes Professor Tendler, who both survived the Holocaust as young boys. In the years after the Holocaust, we find these two young men as members of the Israeli Army in the same platoon. During this scene of the story, Englander (2010), introduces the two main characters, Shimmy and Tendler, and profoundly brings to the reader’s attention their opposing personalities. The first glimpse we get of these two characters is when they are taking seat in a makeshift outdoor mess to eat lunch with their platoon. Shimmy takes his seat, four armed commandos come to sit with him, and they all begin to eat. Moments later, they are joined by Tendler, who carefully places his tin cup on the edge of the table, draws his weapon, and shoots all four commandos in the head. In the war, when France switched sides, they gave identical uniforms to their new allies while their old-allies, now enemies, continued to wear the same French made uniforms. In the midst of shock and terror, Shimmy lashes out on Tendler for killing these men, who were their enemies, …show more content…
Some are strong minded, some are weak minded, and some simply seem to have no mind at all. During the Holocaust, the minds of the many victims involved were played with, poisoned by the Nazi’s brainwashing, and ruined from the many traumas they endured, which caused the majority of them to never completely recover. In Englander’s (2010) literary work, “Free Fruit for Young Widows”, the commonly used phrase “mind shattering” is brought to light in one of the main characters, Professor Tendler, as we learn about all of the traumas he had experienced and how he still struggles with them psychologically. Tendler’s fellow main character, Shimmy Gezer, tells us the story of Tendler’s unspeakable experiences of the Holocaust. As Shimmy and his son, Etgar, sit in their fruit stand, Shimmy utters “the first thing Professor Tendler saw when his death camp was liberated was two, big, tough American soldiers fainting dead away”, Shimmy continues, “the pair stood before the immense, heretofore unimaginable brutality of modern extermination, frozen, slack-jawed before a mountain of putrid, naked corpses, a hill of men. And from this pile of broken bodies that had been set to be burned, a rickety skeletal Tendler stared back” (Englander, 2010, p. 285). It is during this scene in the story where we being to see what kind of traumatizing situations Professor Tendler was forced to endure, and leads us back to where his