...There’s so many stories about them - each survivor with their own version. My version isn’t just awful; it’s traumatic. We were starved, beaten, emotionally destroyed. It was like we were dogs at the pound. Those commercials showing unhealthy animals that make you feel so awful you donate are raising awareness for that cause. Stories like these raise awareness for mine. Going insane, we had to hope we wouldn’t be killed for doing something...
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... I knew a girl named Kalie. She was a wonderful girl, in fact she was my best friend. Every school day we will walk eachother home, and every weekend we made time to hangout. We were always afraid of losing each other. It wasn’t helping that everyone was being killed around us. They shut down the schools, public libraries, and stores. Before they shut down, we gathered all the supplies we could get; food, shelter, clothing. But, no of those mattered, we were eventually going to be killed. No one knows why Hitler would do this, but I hoped that one day he will be killed for what he has done. Kalie’s parents were trying to save her little brother, but they were found and killed, so we take care of Kalie and her brother, my parents are still alive. It was just us five under a cottage in a basement. We were cold and shivering. We were down there for one month. We ran out of food and water. My parents sent us out to look for the food. We traveled through underground tunnels our community has dug. We found an abandoned store with food and water. We soon realized we were not alone, we were being watched, we started to climb back down into the tunnels, as Hitler’s men ran towards us with guns pointed up. We sprinted back through the tunnels and they followed us, we knew we had to break up into different directions. Our cottage was straight ahead, but she went right, I went left, I tried to get their attention, but they wanted her. They sprinted after her. We later met at one of the...
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...The short story “The Lottery” represents the annual tradition of the community to stone or purge one of their people. They choose one of the people living in the village by letting them draw the paper out of the black box and whoever gets the paper with some marks on it will be the chosen one. Some people in this town seems to dislike this annual tradition and wanting it to stop and some people just doesn’t care at all. However, there is no one speaking up for this to happen. This annual tradition will have the chance to stop if there are people who can speak up and stop it. The story shows that people are blind and mute, not literally, because they see what is really going on but they just remain silent about it. Even though they heard that...
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...Survivor Remembers, a short film by Kary Antholis, Gerda Weissmann Klein tells us about her six-year ordeal as a victim of the Holocaust. The story being told to the viewers gives people a new perspective and view on one of our world’s biggest tragedies in history; The Holocaust. Most people have heard of the history being the Holocaust, but not many have heard the story from a person, who actually experienced and suffered through all the horror during the time. Weissmann was only fifteen years old when the Nazi army invaded her home in Poland. She survived years living inside concentration camps, where she suffered the harsh conditions along with thousands of other captured Jewish people. The Nazi army took away everything from this poor fifteen year old girl including her entire family, her teenage years, and her hope to live. Now 65 years later, Gerda Weissmann Klein has decided to share her story with the many who choose to listen to it and understand everything that happened to her during this time. One Survivor Remembers was a very eye-opening film to watch and different things done by the creators of the film helped bring Weissmann’s story to life in the minds of many of the viewers....
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...author and narrator of Maus, and also one of the story's main characters. Born in Stockholm after the Holocaust, he is the only surviving child of Vladek and Anja Spiegelman. His brother, Richieu, died as a child during the war, and his mother committed suicide in 1968 when he was twenty years old. He has a history of mental illness and is married to Francoise, a French woman who converted to Judaism upon their engagement. Maus centers around two primary narratives: Vladek's experiences as a Jew in World War II Poland, and Art's relationship with his aging father. This second narrative follows a period of time in Art's life beginning around 1978 and ending sometime shortly before Vladek's death in 1982.When the story opens, Art lives in New York and does not see his father very often, though he lives only a short distance away in Queens. But as Art begins to draw this story about Vladek's Holocaust experiences, he begins to visit his father more and more frequently. Their relationship is strained, as Vladek's gruff demeanour and unwillingness to spend money routinely infuriate his son. Art is filled with complex feelings towards his father ranging from admiration for his survival in Auschwitz, to frustration towards his aggravating tendencies, and guilt for his own neglect of a father who has lived through so many difficult times.Art also has complex emotions towards the Holocaust. Though he did not live through it personally, he feels that he is constantly affected by it. His father's...
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...Conflict is a recurring theme amongst humanity. It can be argued that humanity in some ways breeds most conflict from itself. Although some conflict humanity faces are self-created, some conflict is pre-ordained in nature. Author of the short story “The Shawl” set in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, Cynthia Ozick, uses both types of conflict in her story, Both natural and self-created. The second, being the self-created conflict of the holocaust, that our main characters have to endure, and the other conflict being natural. The natural conflict of nurturing your baby and keeping her safe. Self-created conflict can have its roots sprung from various settings, people and actions. Cynthia Ozick roots her story’s conflict right in the...
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...never want to look back. Out of shame? Fear? In today’s day, we respect the past but rarely delve into it except for certain days. Elie Wiesel’s book Night is the self-account of Wiesel’s life in the Holocaust. It reflects back to the time through the eyes of a Jewish boy living in the awful conditions. It tells the story from the first few steps that Hitler takes, to when the camps was liberated. Wiesel delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity. The Final Days is a film about resistance in Nazi Germany of one woman in particular. The movie starts off showing the main character having fun and there is light and laughter. This quickly changes as it shows her with members of the White Rose, an Anti-Nazi organization. She was caught and found guilty. This movie is a true story based on an actual Sophie Scholl who lived throughout this and was a member of the White Rose. Although one is about standing up for your rights not matter the consequence, and one is about knowing when hope is but a lost phrase, barely living in your mind. While that is all true, they also have a lot of differences, for instance, they have very different main characters who come from different parts and are effected by the war in different ways, each story is told in very different ways and each has its own meaning, and they have different messages that are portrayed throughout each. In the memoir Night, Elie starts off as a regular Jewish boy in Sighet...
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...Wiesel was also a teacher. On biography.com the author gives a short summary of his life, including, “In 1978, he became a Professor of Humanities at Boston University.”(Elie Wiesel Jewish)He also taught Judaic studies at the City University of New York. He was also a part time teacher at Yale. He taught many classes and was regarded as a very good teacher. He also gave lectures regarding the holocaust. The lectures are usually based on his individual experience. He also does lectures on other people or just the holocaust in general. Not only did Wiesel encounter the holocaust, but he lived to tell the story. And telling the story is exactly what he did. He has written many, many books about his experience. In the article the author notes,...
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...personal account, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist by Yossi Klein Halevi captures the emotions of a Holocaust survivor in a way that other historical sources are not able to. The memoir is about Halevi’s story growing up as the son of a Holocaust survivor in Brooklyn in the 1960’s-70s. When reading this memoir it is important to understand, memoirs are primary sources that follow a single person’s first-hand account and focuses on a specific event or experience, not their entire life. Other historical sources are usually broader and depict a period of time rather than singular personal stories. A memoir is limited as a primary source; Memoirs are limited to only one individual's point of view, rather than an analysis of many people's perspectives...
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...During wartime in America, stories of current obstacles and advances on the battlefield plaster front pages of mass media. Radio stations constantly deliver updates to the homes of citizens. Currently, broadcasting stations air a round the clock television updates on prevalent issues. At a time when technology limited forms of communication, newspapers accumulated a majority of the responsibility for informing the public. Surprisingly, America as a nation, usually well informed and considerate of global issues and situations, left the Holocaust, the genocide of over six million Jews, Gypsies and handicapped across Germany and Poland, in the shadows of the concurrent war. Beginning in 1939, European countries engaged in a war that America clearly seemed unprepared to participate in. When America finally entered the war, the domestic concerns it faced at the time held precedence, even though it received news of the atrocities in Europe. The Holocaust, initially neglected as front-cover news, now holds a major concern and memory in American history. Since the start of World War II, strengthened and advanced reactions to the horrors of The Holocaust have ensued from simultaneously increasing publicity. As war broke out across Europe, Americans laid back, hoping to continue isolationist efforts. Still recovering from the Depression, newspaper companies held a large monopoly of the public information distribution (Holocaust). American citizens simply remained unaware that millions...
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...happened earlier in life and the footprints we made back then. However, after every catastrophe miracles often get the opportunity to flower. In the short story “Save as Many as You Ruin”, written in 2007 by Simon Van Booy, the main character; Gerard, is given due to fate the opportunity to be blessed by new chances in order to save what has been ruined in the past. In the past, before Gerard became a father to a little girl named Lucy, Gerard lived a hectic “businessman’s” life consisting of constant social events including ladies and uncountable amounts of money. More precisely he lived the Hollywood lifestyle. Back then he also enjoyed the promiscuous life where sex was never the same, “He has slept with many women” (p.2, l.34), but despite of this, what Gerard regrets most from his past is his desire to have sex with Izzy: “Gerard vaguely remembers the feeling of being in love with Laurel and the desire to have sex with Izzy. He knew that other men enjoyed the occasional partner outside of long-term relationships, and he wanted to try it.” (p.6, ll. 123-126) Even though he is genuinely in love, for the first time, with Laurel as the above sentence also explains, he commits a crime, which sooner puts on a show of huge regret and his conscience is still being plagued by this mistake. However, accentuating the mood in the story with constant flashbacks of Gerard’s past, the movement of the snow is being mentioned on several occasions for instance in the beginning: “By the...
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...There are many amazing stories that have been passed through time of people making the world a better place. The story of Hitler, however, is not one of those. He caused so many deaths that there is no certain number that someone can give. There are only estimates, all of them being in the millions. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau am Inn, Austria, and was the fourth of six children (Miller). Him and his family moved around quite often when he was a small child (Miller), but that was before his father died in 1903, and then his mother four years after (“Adolf Hitler”). Moving around a lot meant moving schools as well. He was a very bright student for most of his years, until he ended up failing the sixth grade (Miller). Hitler...
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...Between the years 1939 and 1945 the world went through major world changes. The historical events that reflected the play in the Diary of Anne Frank was that the world war had affected the lives of others because of the power of hitler . The Holocaust was the systematic, regulatory, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially “ and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German community. The historical events that reflected in the play the diary of Anne frank are that Anne Frank's life has impacted the lives of others because her family background, Anne's time in hiding, and what she expressed in her famous diary all have taken place in the Holocaust. Anne Frank was a German-Jewish diarist. She was known for the diary she wrote while hiding from anti-Jewish persecution in Amsterdam during World War II. Her diary describes with...
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...[Author’s Name] [Instructor’s Name] [Course title] [Date] Freedom Writers- Movie Review “Freedom Writers" has a great advantage over all those other idealistic and somewhat naïve teachers who come to inner city schools and initially face setbacks but persevere and eventually gain the students' interest and teach them to achieve far beyond the expectations of society movies. Hilary Swank who stars as Erin Gruwell is an idealistic and somewhat naive new teacher who wears pearls and too-short skirts and is convinced she can help her low-achieving inner-city students. These kids though "kids" is the wrong word considering the advanced age of most of the actors live the worst lives possible in America. Every single one in the class of high school freshmen had a friend who has been killed, and most know more than one. Every single one (except the white kid) has been shot at. None of them (except the white kid) has ever heard of the Holocaust. The popular movie, Freedom Writers, is based on the true story of a Long Beach (CA) teacher who mentors a group of students following the LA riots of 1990. The teacher, Erin Gruwell, finds herself hated by her ethnically diverse "gangbanging" students (LaGravenese). Through writing, both Gruwell and her students work through one of the most tumultuous times of racial tension in the United States since the 1960s (Gruwell). In other words, the movie is indulging in a little hard-knock overkill. Every one of these 14-year-olds has been shot at? For...
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...storm while her husband and son are away in town. In “The Lottery”, it is about how a town goes through a lottery to complete a village ritual. Each short story has its individual purpose. Although the authors do now know each other, the poems can be used together to explain the significant of symbolism. In the short stories, we see that the symbolism of the storm and the lottery has huge significance to the overall concept of the story. In the “The Storm”, the storm holds literal and figurative significant to the story. For the story, the storm is the base of the story and the...
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