Stefania Podgorska's Mistakes

When Irene Safran was only twenty-one years old, her carefree life ended in the face of the Holocaust. Born to two Jewish parents as one of ten children-- four girls and six boys in all-- in Munkachevo, Czechoslovakia around the year 1923, her world changed in early April 1944 when she and her family were transferred to a Jewish ghetto. For the next year, Irene's life was a series of deaths, losses, and humiliations no human should ever have to suffer, culminating, years later, with a triumphant ending. Her story is proof that the human spirit can triumph over all manner of adversity and evil.

In the year 1941, Lithuania was invaded and many Jewish families fled from Lithuania. Margarets family didn't leave because her brother Alik was at a children's holiday camp. Margaret was never sent to a camp, she lived in the ghetto. Margaret's description of the ghetto years as “dreadful”. The people were forced to do hard labour and were deprived of their food.

Roma Nutkiewicz’s book re-tells events of what she went through from her childhood, leading all the way up to the end of the Holocaust. Roma shares her personal account of what living in the Nazi-era was like. Roma explains how in her early years she was just like any other child. She never saw herself or her family to be different from other communities, because everyone surrounding her was Jewish. Until World War II started. Not to long after Germans started to move into Warsaw, Poland where she lived and everything in her life changed. In the beginning it started with curfews, then she needed her identification cards at

During the duration of World War II, the Jewish people of Europe were subjected to such inhumane actions at the hands of the Nazi party. Ellie Wiesel, in his memoir Night, describe this demoralizing treatment in great detail. As the reader delves deeper into Wiesel’s experiences, the dehumanization of the Jewish people becomes greater and greater. First, they were stripped of their possessions, then their names, and finally their dignity, and though the Nazi tried to finally stripped them of their humanity, they were unsuccessful.

The holocaust was a tragic time which involved the killing of Jews to create a ‘pure race’ in Germany. Jacob Boas analyzes the stories of five young Jewish children through the book “We Are Witnesses,” who were forced through the hardships of war. Through the perspectives of David Rubinowicz, Yitzhak Rudashevski, Moshe Flinker, Éva Heyman, and Anne Frank, the struggles of the five children are clear as they try to hold on to their ideals while still fighting for their lives. “We Are Witnesses,” by Jacob Boas adopts repetition and diction through the eyes of David Rubinowicz, imagery using Yitzhak Rudashevski, repetition and imagery via Moshe Flinker, repetition with Éva Heyman, and repetition and syntax by Anne Frank to brandish how Jewish

One of the most memorable events about World War II was the holocaust. Most people remember the many lives that were lost in this massive genocide. Although many lives were lost a few were able to survive and share their experiences in those harsh times. Many non Jewish people helped in anyway possible such as Stefania Podgorska. During the holocaust Podgorska kept resistance by hiding and providing for Jews in the most necessary times.

In The Story of Blima: A Holocaust Survivor, author Shirley Russak Wachtel presents scenes depicting the worst that human beings are capable of, and the best. She skillfully contrasts her mother’s suffering at the hands of the Nazis with the loving treatment that Blima receives from three strong women. In the course of the story, Blima receives loving support from her mother; from the labor guard, Gizella; and from her sister-in-law, Ruschia.

Survival in Auschwitz written by Primo Levi is a first-hand description of the atrocities which took place in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. The book provides an explicit depiction of camp life: the squalor, the insufficient food supply, the seemingly endless labour, cramped living space, and the barter-based economy which the prisoners lived. Levi through use of his simple yet powerful words outlined the motive behind Auschwitz, the tactical dehumanization and extermination of Jews. This paper will discuss experiences and reactions of Jews who labored in Auschwitz, and elaborate on the pre-Auschwitz experiences of Jews who were deported to Auschwitz and gassed to death on their arrival, which had not been

Irena got a pass from Warsaw’s Epidemic Control Department, which allowed her to legally visit the Ghetto daily. Then, between 1942-1943, she snuck children out of the Warsaw Ghetto to safe hiding places, and found non-Jewish families to adopt them. The youth only knew Irena by her code name “Jolanta”. She had to persuade many parents to part from their children, which was a very difficult and dreadful task. Irena later recalls, “In my dreams, I still hear the cries when they left their parents.”

Each of these histories reveal a story of suffering that is endured by both Gentile and Jew, but also a story of humanity and salvation. In Five Chimneys: A woman Survivor’s True Story of Auschwitz, Olga Lengyel tells of her family assisting other Jews fleeing the Nazi military. Later, after her own ordeals in Auschwitz, she was saved by citizens in a small Polish village. An essay written by Vera Laska is included in Women and the Holocaust: Different Voices, which is an anthology of essays about women in the Holocaust. In addition to the many stories of survivors and rescuers, I am using several scholarly articles

Ellen Cassedy’s memoir, We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust, charts her journey to her family’s past and her own reckoning with what she finds. As she explores her own family’s Jewish past, she struggles to learn Yiddish and gets to know the broader cultural landscape that is contemporary Lithuania, the place where her family came from. As she sets off to study Yiddish and connect with her Jewish forebears, her uncle Will, a holocaust survivor, gave her a slip pulled from his pocket and told her to read it. It was a sheet that had been folded and refolded multiple times which spoke about a day in the Shavl ghetto. It was a sheet that made her personal conquest into an exploration of Lithuania, on how Jews and non-Jews are confronting their Nazi and Soviet past in order to move forward in the future. The sheet read “On November 5, 1943, a kinder-aktsye, a roundup of children, had occurred. Soldiers were snarling dogs and bayonets had rampages through the narrow streets, ripping apart walls and floors in the search for every last child. A Jewish policeman stood at the ghetto gate as the sons and daughters of the ghetto-hundreds of them-were shoved into trucks and driven away, never to be seen again” (Cassedy, 2012, p. 51). Here she

Between Dignity and Despair, a book written by Marion A. Kaplan, published in 1998, gives us a portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany by the astounding memoirs, diaries, interviews with survivors, and letters of Jewish women and men. The book is written in chronological order of events, from the daily life of German Jewish families prior to when the Holocaust began to the days when rights were completely taken away; from the beginning of forced labor and exile to the repercussion of the war. Kaplan tries to include details from each significant event during the time of the Holocaust. Kaplan

The Holocaust is a very large topic with many subtopics within, which many people have never heard of. One in particular is the Hidden Children of the Holocaust. Like a majority of individuals, I never heard of this topic before, until I started my inquiry work. Hiding children during the holocaust was an effort to save thousands of children’s lives. The children were hidden in different ways, either with false identities, underground, and with or without their parents. The children with false identities were allowed to participate in everyday life activities, like attend school and socialize with children their age, which in the long run this lead to less emotional and mental issues. However, the children that were hidden and not allowed to leave their hiding spots often faced boredom, pain, and torment. Some children were capable of being hid with their parents while other children were not. Depending on the situation the child was in, depends on the effects it had on the child during this time. In this paper, I will be discussing works by two scholars, Natalia Aleksiun’s Gender and Daily Lives of Jews in Hiding in Eastern Galicia and Judy Mitchell’s Children of the Holocaust. Aleksiun’s article talks about the daily lives of Jews in hiding and also about how they prepared their hideouts. Aleksiun’s article mainly focuses on children that were hidden with their families. In Mitchell’s article, he focuses on the hidden children and gives examples/survivor stories on what it

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.

The Holocaust contributed greatly to the mistreatment and manipulation of Jewish people, during which they were captured and put in European concentration camps to work or be killed. People’s lives were ended instantly as they suffered deportation to campsites to work like slaves. Pavel, a servant, used to be a successful Jewish doctor. When Bruno was injured,