FATHER BRESSANI CATHOLIC HIGH SCOOL: A SCHOOL FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES AND ADVANCED PLACEMENT CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
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FATHER BRESSANI CATHOLIC HIGH SCOOL: A SCHOOL FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES AND ADVANCED PLACEMENT CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE
My group read about the diary entries of Éva Heyman, and how she ended up in the concentration camp that killed her.
ReplyDeleteFor me, it was a very saddening story about how a family, living over 350 miles from the heart of Germany in Hungary, was so brutally dismantled by the holocaust. I learned a great many things about the far reaching ideals of anti-Semitism, and how the Hungarian Jews would lose everything from their business to their friends and family. The most tragic part was how Eva’s own mother managed to escape the same fate, but left without her. It was a real story, equal parts about the Holocaust and about an already dysfunctional family that cracked under pressure, offering a unique perspective.
While also hearing about other diary writers, some interesting ideas were raised. In the situation of Yitzacn, one might question if they too would hide their beliefs for fear of persecution. Or, for Éva, would you fight to save your family in such dire circumstances? Could you stay innocent in the face of a harsh world, like David? These are many perspectives we are shown through the eyes of those who the world would not permit to live. And these are many wuestions we hope never to have to answer again.
Indeed, this is the story told time and again of what happened some some sixty-five years ago, and they all point to the same idea; it must never happen again.
The Diary Entires that were presented in class were from a book called 'We are Witnesses.' This book was a was a way to group all of the known diaries together in one to share each child's thoughts, feelings and interpretations of what was going on at the time of the Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteDiary entry one was was from a boy named David Ugadow. He was a 15 year old boy born in Poland and he believed that being in contact with the Germans was that all bad. A quote that was said was stated on page 28, and it read, "Everyone goes around wondering where they can hide. Nowhere. Nowhere is safe now-a-days." How sad is it to be living in a world where you know you can't just close your eyes and wake up from? You can't escape this terrible misfortune. Everywhere you turn is just another sign of your culture breaking and falling from shame and sorrow. But the worst part is that theres no way out. This informational writing helped me border cross into the world of the Jewish and German culture because
The second entry was again from a boy's prospective and his name was Yitzhak Rudashevski. 'Long Live Youth.' He was born in 1927 and died soon after in the year 1943. People in his culture were separated by the colour cards they were given. The yellow card, was 'headed to life,' while every other card was a good indication that you were headed for your death. A quote from page 55 really stood out among most. It read, "We are like animals surrounded by the hunter."
Diary entry three was written by the young Moshi Flinker, who at the time was 13 when the German's attacked his country, Holland. He and his family were brought to Belgium and were named Belgium citizens. They were the lucky ones. They were not distinguished as Jews with the star of David on their chest, shoulders and back. They were able to start a new live with a new identity. People had suspected that they were Jews because of the amount of time that he had spent in Jewish libraries, but he started to grow his faith very large, and always believed that God had a plan for them. Years after he and his parents were murdered, his five sisters and brother retrieved his diary.
The last journal that we had heard about was written from a young girl named Eva Heyman. Everything that happened to Eva in her young childhood was heart wrenching. Starting from her bicycle in which her family took an entire year to save up for, all the way to how her mother left her defensless, because she thought her 2nd husband was more important than her own flesh and blood. But the maid made her feel very guilty in turn about that. Eva ended up dying in a concentration camp, and as for her mother and stepfather, they fled to another country. The guilt did kill her mother eventually. She was found dead lying next to a picture of her late daughter.
This informational writing helped me border cross into the world of the Jewish and German culture because I was able to grasp the reality and real life stories and thoughts from these poor children. I was able to feel what they went through, and the worry and sadness that filled their hearts .How sad is it to be living in a world where you know you can't just close your eyes and wake up from? You can't escape this terrible misfortune. Everywhere you turn is just another sign of your culture breaking and falling from shame and sorrow. But the worst part is that there's no way out.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading and listening to the presentations about the different diary entries. Although they were all the same in essence (all of them were written by teenagers about their lives during the Holocaust), they each told remarkably different stories. David’s story in chapter 1 showed the unfairness of the Holocaust – Jews becoming unemployed and relocated from their homes to ghettos in larger cities – and presented the scary truths, “nobody knew where to go, nothing felt safe or happy”. In chapter 2, the main message was focused on the Star of David and the idea of work setting you free. Yitzhak, the boy who wrote this diary, discussed how he did not feel ashamed about having to wear the label, but rather felt ashamed of the Germans for labeling them, which was, at least for me, a whole perspective and idea to think about. In my group’s chapter about Moshe, I found it interesting to hear about the story of a teenager who was seemingly lucky for a long time, having escaped his home country of Holland and moved to Belgium, but could not stop thinking about his “brothers and sisters” that he had left back home. Finally, the story in chapter 4 about Eva was heartbreaking on an entirely different level, with the family being so dysfunctional, Eva’s unparalleled desire to live, and in the end, Eva being killed while her mother and step-father managed to flee to another country.
ReplyDeleteI think this informational writing offers a unique way to cross the border into the world of the Jewish and German cultures because it is so real. These teenagers wrote these diaries as a way of expressing their thoughts and feelings during this horrible time when they could do nothing else. They could never have expected that their diaries would one day get published and would be studied as a way of insight into the past. They simply wrote down the things they had in their heads because they needed to get them out but could not just go around talking about them. Overall, I thought these diaries were another great form of literature that really opened my eyes again and showed me even more sides to the story, making my view on the Holocaust even more well-rounded.
The process of reading and sharing the diaries was one I truly enjoyed, if only because it was one of the most relatable pieces of Holocaust literature. The fact that these people were my age, lends me a perspective that I find extremely invaluable. It makes me wonder if those would be thoughts running through my mind if, God forbid, I was in such circumstances. The circumstances for each teenager, however, were quite different, thus exhibiting different “cause-and-effects” and how different personalities accept such a downturn of events. The first diary entry, the one my group explored, offered two themes that really ingrained themselves in my mind. One being the curious references to fate; oftentimes there were excerpts like, “[I] resigned myself to fate”, or David’s overall belief that fate resigned his father to a labour camp. I find myself unsure whether to pity or yell at David for this type of attitude. Pity as the Jews were really effectively oppressed and truthfully couldn’t fight what was happening to them. Anger as David almost felt as though he deserved this anti-Semitism from the Germans, that fate would have dealt him this card regardless. The second is how forcefully David destroyed the single story in our minds. He spent pages explaining the helplessness the Polish militia faced, just as the Jews did, in the face of the SS, and how they were just following orders. It humbles me to see a boy as young as me act so wisely, to understand the negative effects the Holocaust had on others, when it would be so easy to lay blame and become bitter.
ReplyDeleteThe second diary basically outlined how the tiered system of the Jewish individual appeared during WW II, as well as the concept of “work sets you free”. What I found most important though, was the mention of the Star of David being warped. How clever, albeit cruel, it was to take a symbol that made you proud, that could positively describe an entire culture and destroy it. Yet, was it the symbol that destroyed the person or the person that destroyed the symbol? The Star of David represented the Jews, but the Jews became the imperfect race, and so the Star of David became a symbol of humiliation, of uselessness. Nevertheless, and despite the specific order of events, the whole dismantling of the Jewish culture was cruelly clever. The third diary entry was my favourite. It was the most thought-provoking, in my opinion, in fact, in cannot stop thinking about it. The whole plan of enrolling under foreigner status appears so deceptively simple and yet seems to have the most emotionally destructive impact on Moshe. Although this could also be due to his age, he died at 18, living longer than any other child in this book. Moshe had this struggle with religion. In public he was obviously forced to denounce everything that defined him as a Jew, but in his diary he seemed obsessive about his faith. His belief was so strong and his opinions about it so defined that I thought him to be a fundamentalist. Perhaps he was compensating for his denial of his faith and people, or maybe he was so shamed that he wanted to be the Jew he wished he could be and used his entries to become that man. Personally, I thought he was a whack job, based on his overly religious diary entries and rants about the path to salvation paved with blood, but then I took a step back and attempted to understand his situation. In the end though, I really have no right to judge, and so I won’t…I’ll speculate. The final diary entry further solidified on of my hypotheses about these diaries. The unrequited love between Eva and her mother and the outcome of this diary, further proved to me that a reoccurring theme in each of these diaries is: the breakdown of families. David began to hate his father, then as soon as he was sent to the camp, cried over him because he realized he loved him. Anne Frank disliked her own mother. The sad thing is that I am unsurprised by this; rather it is an expected outcome. Drastic events, such as the Holocaust, emphasize, deepen and accentuate certain emotions. People seem to love stronger, hate harder, cry louder and laugh longer. Sometimes they allow for great things, like border-crossing, like wise understanding—such as in the case of David—other times they seem to drive people to insanity. Such historical events resonate through every generation, each individual. They upturn every proverbial stone, they destroy and create, warp and beautify. No one remains untouched or unchanged, whether for better or worse; these diaries taught be that.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading my group’s diary entry and listening to the other group’s presentations, I found that two of the diary entries really affected me.
ReplyDeleteMy group’s entry was that of David Rubinowicz, a young boy who experienced first-hand the misery and evil of the Holocaust. Because I had the opportunity to read all of David’s story and not just specific excerpts, I was able to get a more complete sense of what he had to experience. Something that really struck me was that at the beginning of the diary he was deeply affected and dismayed by the various murders, arrests and disappearances of his fellow Jews, but after a while he became much more removed and distant from the killings; more of a reporter than a victim. This was extremely saddening to me because for someone to reach the point where they have experienced so much death and loss that they cannot feel sorrow anymore is something that should never happen. However, our diary entry also brought a speck of hope as it discussed how the militia was very compassionate to the Jews and expressed regret for what they were dong. This reinforces the notion that not all Germans were anti-Jewish and many did regret what they were forced to do. The final point that exhibited the kindness of the Polish people was the fact that many of them hid David when the Germans were collecting people for the death camps. I thought this was interesting because it showed that Polish people were not complacent and chose to take action and do their part by trying to save David and many others.
I also found the presentation on Yitzhak Rudashevski to be quite interesting. Although the group discussed various aspects of Yitzhak’s Holocaust experience, the one that I found the most interesting was the ranking system. To me the fact that people were given different colour cards to determine whether they could work and live or immediately die was very alarming. The Jews were treated like animals; the best were chosen to live in slavery and produce and goods while the weak were slaughtered outright. To think that humans could commit such atrocities to their own kind is truly frightening. Another aspect of the story that really affected me was the fact that the Germans employed Jewish police who were brutal to their fellow countrymen. This part of the presentation caused me to stop and think about how the concept of “survival of the fittest” is still prevalent in our world today. Despite millions of years of evolution we still follow our basic and most prehistoric instincts. At the dawn of humanity a caveman needed to run faster than his neighbour to avoid being eaten by deadly predators. In the 1940s Jews were willing to arrest, torture and kill other Jews to ensure their own survival. Today, when the fire alarm rings we push, scratch and claw our way to be the first person out the door. No matter how much technology and knowledge we have gained; our decisions are still made based on those basic instincts from a long gone era.
I found that this informational writing helped me because it allowed me to cross over into the land of the Jewish people and put myself in their shoes. Reading someone’s diary allows you to explore a person’s most private thoughts and truly experience what they are feeling. I found that these diaries allowed us to gain a connection between our world and those of children the same age as us who were living in a very different time. Because of this the diaries allowed me to better understand the emotional side of the Holocaust. I now believe that I have a more complete grasp on what it would have felt like to be a part of something so sinister. I do not claim that I can fully understand or imagine what it would have been like to live in such a desperate and terrifying time, but as a great philosopher once said “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” or in this case a single diary entry that allowed me to begin to comprehend the intense emotional rollercoaster that Jewish teenagers experienced.
The diary entries brought a lot of different versions of the same Jewish story to me. Each individual entry showed some insight on the lives of the Jewish youth. My group read the story of Moshe. He was, in my opinion one of the lucky few who managed to escape the war for at least a little while. Through his diary, we learn of his life. What was interesting about it was that he was not entirely happy. We see that his thoughts were plagued with the memory of his old Jewish friends, or the fact that he was turning against his faith. He shows the readers that although he was free, he was still as much a prisoner as the rest of the Jewish population. This is something new for me, because I had not known of something like this before. It shows me that even those who escaped the war still felt it in their daily lives.
ReplyDeleteThese diary entries are a great way for a person to see the lives of both the Jews and the Germans. Through them, we see how the Jewish people lived, before and during the war. We see how these people were stripped of everything they had, and forced to either take up another identity or become prisoners of the Nazis. Also they show us that not all the Germans liked what was happening. In his diary, David wrote that people in his old village respected his family, and were sad to see them leave. Overall, the diaries showed us deeper into the lives of the people during the Holocaust. It gives everyone a bigger way to see the trouble that it caused the people.
The diary entries were all written by teenagers who were victims of the Holocaust and their experiences all had different perspectives and views as to what effected them during this tragic time. Despite being all Jewish teenagers suffering the misfortunes of WWII, they had very different stories. In chapter 1, a Polish born boy named David has little of hope for himself and his people. It feels as if he knows that there is no where for him to go. The reality is he will die and I assumed that he was well aware of it. It wasn’t something that simple to have a positive attitude towards because there really was no light at the end of the tunnel. In chapter 2, Yitzhak later similar to David does realize he has no future to look forward to, “We are like animals surrounded by the hunter”, clearly sends the message that he has a dark destiny ahead of him. Another quote I found interesting was “I wasn’t ashamed to appear on the street not because I would be noticed as a Jew but because I was ashamed of what they were doing to us.” This brought us to a new perspective into play. It showed that he was disgusted about what the German’s were doing to the people of his culture. In chapter 3, was personally my favorite entry as it is about the life of Moshi. He and his family were brought to Belgium but not as Jewish slaves of the Holocaust but as free people of Belgium. Although being Jewish they were recognized as a Belgium citizen. Suspicion grew because of the time invested in the Jewish library and eventually his family is killed but it took many years until their scandal was over. I honestly don’t understand how they were able to be under the radar of the German forces in Belgium for so long. Eventually they were killed but it just seems almost impossible. The fourth entry truly drew discomfort to me about the life of Eva Heyman. The fact that her own mother left her with Eva’s step father is basically selling your daughter out to be tortured and killed. How it is possible for a parent to do that to their child is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteIt helped me border cross to these Jewish teenagers because I could put myself in their shoes. I enjoyed how it allowed the reader to experience and see through the eyes of the victims and educate how they felt, what they saw, what they knew and what was to come. This drew connections and questions as to how I would react to these events. I know if I had been captured I would feel hopeless and upset as well. Eventually, I think I would try to escape if I had the chance. By reading these entries they all had a sense of death and knew that there was no future for them but not once did they record an escape plan or even have a thought of it. If they were so sure of their deaths why didn’t they even try rounding each other up and make a plan to flee the camps. I do understand there is nowhere to run or go but thats not the only way to look at it. It is much easier said than done but what did they have to lose.
After reading and reflecting upon the diary entries of Holocaust victims found in the book 'We are Witnesses' , I believe I have truly ‘border-crossed’, allowing myself to fully understand the struggles of a Jewish teenager growing up in the war-torn countries of Europe. In chapter one, titled ‘The end of the world will soon be here’, written by David Rubinowicz I realized that the Jewish people also wanted to break the single story of the Germans. They too realized that not ALL Germans were bad and some committed the crimes against the Jews for their own safety. David shows us this by stating that he only told of facts, events that he had witnessed with his own eyes or were sure of. At one point in David’s dairy, he states that some Jewish people sent some gifts to the police because they had not been “that bad” and had treated them civilly. Although David’s diary was titled “The end of the world will soon be here” meaning that he recognized that things were getting bad, I also noticed this glimpse of hope in the way he wrote. That bit of hope that things could get better for him and his family even though he was living in a country--continent where there pretty much were NO safe places anymore, he had that glimpse of hope. His hope gives me hope in my day-to-day life.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter two, “Long Live Youth” which was a diary entry written by Yitzhak Rudasheuski, I believe it was mostly surrounding the discussion of how the youth of the war were. Yitzhak, being our age only 14 was not ashamed to be Jewish, to have to wear the Star of David but she was more ashamed for the German people. She believed that the Germans should have been ashamed they even gave the Jewish people the star to wear. Yitzhak was more ashamed of the helplessness the Jewish people had, no way of escaping. She was able to realize that it was NOT the Jews fault in any way. I think this is great that she saw this perspective because many people, especially young people, when faced with situations where they are victimized, they seem to blame themselves, feeling they are doing something wrong when they are not. One specific quote that stood out in my mind from this entry was “we are like animals surrounded by the hunter”, Yitzhak also saw that her people were not being treated like human beings. This brings me to a point made in the novel, “The boy in the Striped Pajamas” when Bruno’s father refers to the Jewish people on the other side of the fence as “not really people”. For the young people of Yitzhak’s area, the only way of ‘escape’ was their homework club where she said she felt warm and peaceful. For most people they are escape from this “living hell” was death. This freed them from all pain and suffering they had to endure.
In Chapter three, written by Moshe Flinker, titled “My Name is Harry” it gives us a very different perspective. This boy Moshe and his family assumed a new identity in Belgium as Dutch. When relocating to Belgium, they did not classify themselves as Jewish but as foreigners. This family’s only way of survival in their opinion was pretending to be who they really are not. If I was another Jewish family, I can honestly say I would not agree with what they are doing and would probably be angry with Moshe and his family. In my opinion, I would rather stand for something I believe then pretend to be something or someone I am not. Then again, it is easier said than done. In this diary you can see that Moshe (Harry) was too ashamed that he had to hide his true identify. An example of this is when people asked for his name, he almost had to swallow his pride when he said his name was Harry. What I found ironic in this diary was that when Moshe was denying his religion and faith, his relationship with God grew. He became closer to God and believed that the Jews were the chosen people and that God would one day lead them to the Promised Land. It startled me as to why, his faith strengthened if he was denying it...
In chapter 4 of this book, Eva Herman writes about her experiences during the Holocaust. Eva and her family were very wealthy and influential in their area of living. Her family was torn apart before the war, because her mother chooses to find new men before taking care of her own daughter. Through the war, Eva’s only wish is for her family to be all- together. Her world really starts to crash because of the war when her bike is taken away from her and she loses her best friend. This poor girl never understood why or what anyone around her were doing in relation to the war. She was taught, “It was a great burden to be a Jew” and never understood why. It really breaks my heart to realize that so many young children were affected by this horrible catastrophe.
ReplyDeleteThrough these diary entries, I was also able to border cross into the German culture to understand that sometimes joining the militia or army were these peoples only choice. It was either this or like the Jewish people, death.
These students wrote:
ReplyDeleteIsabella: This informational writing helped me border cross into the world of the Jewish and German culture because I was able to grasp the reality and real life stories and thoughts from these poor children. I was able to feel what they went through, and the worry and sadness that filled their hearts .How sad is it to be living in a world where you know you can't just close your eyes and wake up from? You can't escape this terrible misfortune. Everywhere you turn is just another sign of your culture breaking and falling from shame and sorrow. But the worst part is that there's no way out.
Martha: I think this informational writing offers a unique way to cross the border into the world of the Jewish and German cultures because it is so real. These teenagers wrote these diaries as a way of expressing their thoughts and feelings during this horrible time when they could do nothing else. They could never have expected that their diaries would one day get published and would be studied as a way of insight into the past. They simply wrote down the things they had in their heads because they needed to get them out but could not just go around talking about them.
Thomas: I do not claim that I can fully understand or imagine what it would have been like to live in such a desperate and terrifying time, but as a great philosopher once said “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” or in this case a single diary entry that allowed me to begin to comprehend the intense emotional rollercoaster that Jewish teenagers experienced.
Quite interesting comments, thank-you. Informational writing (the diary entries and the newspaper reports) provide more facts, details and eyewitness accounts of the events. My comment to these diary entries is simply this: they are emotionally draining. As the reading audience it makes it quite difficult to listen to the words of teenagers (like you) that are no longer with us. These words are stark, painful, and unbelievable. I learned many different realities that I would not otherwise know through the fiction. For example, Yitzak teaches us that the yellow cards leads to certain death; Moshe escaped but he was plagued by the victimization of those who did not escape; and the fact that Jews were willing to arrest, torture and kill other Jews to ensure their own survival. Although this writing is a real-to-live (informational)to me it still reads like a Hollywood motion picture. How do I erase Hollywood images from my mind?
My group read about the tragic story of Eva Herman. I felt such compassion t such a little girl. She seemed so sweet, and she was living such a great life, until someone who felt threatened by Jews took it all away from her. One passage taken from her diary that I found interesting was her reaction to the nazi army coming to take away her bicycle. It meant the world to a little girl, and reminded her of her best friend marta, who died in the holocaust already. She cried and yelled at the soldiers saying they should be ashamed of stealing a little girls bike, but they just brushed it off and said that she shouldn't be making such a comment because she was more or less no more important than dirt on the ground.
ReplyDeleteI found her story quite tragic when her mother would fight for her second husband tone released from jail on a multiple occasions. When it came time for Eva and her family to go to the concentration camps, her mother lied and said her husband had a disease and would have to stay in the infirmary. Her mother got to stay with her step father, while Eva got sent to ashuwitz. All Eva wanted was her mothers love, and she never got it.
We read other diaries. I remember one from Moshe flinker. He was a Jew, but had to flee the country because of the impending war. When they escaped, they were not registered as Jews, and moshe had to lie about who he was. He developed a strongo faith while he was in hiding. It was a shame he had to perish too, it was a shame they all did, because they did not deserve to die.