“A Scrap of Time”
An Emotional Take on the Holocaust The work of Ida Fink, the author of “A Scrap of Time” has been characterized as cold, showing a lack of compassion, and stating facts which only appeal to your sense of logic. While Fink could very well be stating facts, she draws the reader in with emotion. From the title of the story to the very last sentence. I, in the next few paragraphs will open your eyes and show you how Ida Fink is undoubtedly appealing to your sense of emotion and not just simply describing a day in the life a Jew in World War II. It’s not that simple. Can someone possibly write a story about the Holocaust and not have an inkling of emotion? The answer is no. The title “Scrap of Time” to me is an emotional title, meaning a seemingly small part of a big, drawn out time in her life. Yet she holds onto it. Keeping this scrap in the back of her mind as a reminder of what once was. An unwanted scrap of the character’s life, a life of segregation, humiliation, and anguish.
The narrator recalls, “We had different measure of time, we different ones, always different, always with that mark of difference that moved some of us to pride, and others to humility. We, who because of our difference were condemned once again, as we had been before in history, we were condemned once again during this time measured not in months nor by the rising and setting of the sun, but by a word- “action,” a word signifying movement, a word you would use about a novel or a play.”(Fink 4) This paragraph to me exerts a feeling of disgust, humility, and sarcasm because of the comparison of a pleasant action to that of a deathly one. she’s slighting the Germans for describing a massacre as an “action”, to hide what it really means: an attempt of mass extinction of a race and religion. The people of the village, experience the anguish of never being able to lead a