You should be up to page 90 this week. Please respond to the following prompts:
- What genre is your book? Genre is the literary type or category like novel, poetry, autobiography, history, poetry, etc. How did you determine the genre?
- Describe the characters you have met, support your opinion with passages selected from the book.
Reminder to follow guidelines, answer prompt, write on a Word document, spell check, save and paste to blog site.
49 comments:
1.The Cage is Ruth Sender’s autobiography. This is her first hand account of what happened to her and her family in Poland from 1939-1945. I determined this after reading the introduction, which gives her prison number and some background information. It is obvious also because it is written in first person. “The gates of the ghetto in Lodz are shut tight. 180.000 Jewish men, women and children are herded inside the barbed wire cage. Unemployment, hunger, disease. My little brother contracts tuberculosis.”
2.I have met the author, Ruth, who is forced to grow up very quickly after losing her mother, who she describes as “a very young woman when my father died of a typhus epidemic. She had six young children and was expecting seventh.” Ruth’s three older siblings, Mala, Chana and Yankele, are smuggled to Russia. The youngest, Laibele, becomes very sick with TB and grows weaker as they continue to live in the ghetto. A selection occurs and Mama is sent to the camp. Ruth then has to care for her 3 brothers. She weakens and the generosity and love are apparent when Motele and Mosishele, “my darling brothers, gave up one week’s bread for a tangerine. They are my miracle. Their devotion the greatest wonder in this cage.”
1. 10000 children is a history book. I think so because it is true stories about the holocaust from children that were sent to England on the Kindertransport.
2.The characters i have met were children that survived the holocaust through the kindrertransport. There is no main character in my book.
1.The book that I'm reading is called,"Anna Is Still Here," the genre is history. I know this because it talks about the holocaust and how Anna was in hiding during this time.
2.The characters that I have met are Anna who is the girl that was in hiding, Mrs. Neumann who is the woman that Anna goes to visit a lot of the time. She is also Jewish and has lost family members at Auschwitz, Anna's parents are also mentioned Simon who is the dad and her mother who's name not told. I would say that Anna is the main character of the story because she is the character that the story is based on. She is the one who was in hiding and is telling about her story.
If Not Now when?
Primo Levi
The story I am reading, If Not Now, When?, is historical Fiction, although it is based on a true story. We do know that the story is based on real events because the summary on the back says, "Based on a true story, If Not Now, When?..." I understand that this is based on a true story and these events may have occurred but we have no way of understanding if the characters in the book are real or if the events mentioned actually happen.
In my independent reading book I have so far met two main characters, Mandel and Leonid. They are both men, Jews, soldiers, and lost. Mandel is extremely good at handling weapons and mending things. In his past, Mandel was a watchmender; "Yes, I was a watchmender, with a certificate and all." He is older than Leonid because he always refers to him as a kid, but he is not very old himself because he helped defend Novoselki against a German attack.
sorry everyone I mistakenly hit the enter key and I had not finished typing........
As I was saying, Leonid is a Jew like Mandel and was a paratrooper who served in the war. He is also good at handling weapons and helped to defend Novoselki from attack by the Germans. Leonid is a "Missing Jew" which means he has run away and is trying to escape the inevitable.
The Diary of a Young girl is Anne Frank's Autobiography. The book is her account of how she lived in the Secret Annex for two years with her family as well and the Van Daans and you can tell because the book is written in first person from Anne's point of view. All of this was recorded in her diary which she named Kitty. In this book, I met the narrator, Anne. She is a young teenage girl who matures greatly through the book because of the many hardships that she had to endure. She also isn't a very social person and that is the reason she began her diary. "Now I'm back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place: I don't have a friend." Another character that we meet is her father who is her idol. She always thinks of what her father would do in a situation before she acts and he was a managing director of the Dutch Opekta Company which made jam. We also meet her sister Margot who is the perfect daughter. She was always getting the best grades and was the epitome of politeness while Anne was always scolded for her bad manners. Anne's mother, Edith Frank, was very strict and, to Anne, it appeared that her mother didn't care for her very much and never understands her. "At moments like these I can't stand Mother. It's obvious that I'm a stranger to her; she doesn't even know what I think about the most ordinary things." We also meet the van Daan family which consists of Peter, Petronella and Hermann. Petronella is also very much like Edith Frank in the sense that they are always criticizing Anne and praising Margot. Hermann was always very quiet but knew how to take charge in a time of need. When there were robberies happening in the lower floor of the factory they were hiding in, he made sure that no one would be able to discover them in the Secret Annex. Peter van Daan was Petronella and Hermann's son who would become Anne's love interest later in the story. At the beginning he was more of a nuisance to Anne, but as the story grew on they became good friends. Anne described Peter's situation as, "caught in the middle, but no one takes Peter seriously anymore, since he's hypersensitive and lazy." The last character that was residing in the Secret Annex with these two families was a dentist named Albert Dussel. Anne had to share a room with him and he never really cared about anyone else besides himself. "Dussel, who's having to give up many of his comforts, is carping at everyone." He always thought of himself first and seemed to never bond with any of the other members of the Annex.
The Book Thief by: Markus Zusak
The genre of this book is history. You can tell this because the whole book is set during World War 2, which was more than 50 years ago. So far in this book I have met quite a few important characters:
1. Liesel Meminger (A.K.A.: The Book Thief): This is a young girl who had a little brother that died, and was given up by her mother to foster parents. She is the main character and loves to read. She is growing up in Germany, and this book is mostly about her struggles. The best quote that tells about Liesel from the book is: "It was January 1939. She was nine years old, soon to be ten. Her brother was dead."
2. Rosa Hubermann: Rosa Hubermann is the tyrannical foster mother of Liesel. She shouts at Liesel a lot and calls her saumensch (A German insult) very often. Her version of loving Liesel is shouting at her and giving her watschens (The German equivalent of a spanking). The qoute from the book that best shows this was: " 'Saumensch, du dreckiges!' Liesel's foster mother shouted that first evening when she refused to have a bath. 'You filthy pig! Why won't you get undressed?' She was good at being furious. In fact you could say that Rosa Hubermann had a face decorated with constant fury."
3. Hans Hubermann: Hans is Liesel loving foster father who helps teach Liesel to read and is very supportive of Liesel. He also loves to smoke, and rolls his own cigarettes. The best quote to describe him is: "***Some Facts About Hans Hubermann*** He loved to smoke. The main thing he enjoyed about smoking was the rolling. He was a painter by trade and played the piano accordion. This came in handy, especially in winter, when he could make a little money playing in the pubs of Molching, like the Knoller. He had already cheated me [Death] in one world war but would later be put into another (as a perverse kind of reward), where he would somehow manage to avoid me again."
4. Max Vandenburg: Max is a Jew that is hiding in Liesel's basement. He is a fist fighter and a good writer. The quote that best describes Max is: " Max Vandenburg was born in 1916. He grew up n Stuttgart. When he was younger, he grew to love nothing more than a good fistfight."
5. Rudy Steiner: Rudy is a young boy who is always trying to get Liesel to kiss him. Also, Jesse Owens is his idol, and once Rudy covered himself in charcoal, and the ran the hundred meter dash to be like Owens. The best quote to describe Rudy is this: "Rudy Steiner- The boy next door who was obsessed with the black American athlete Jesse Owens."
6. Death: Death (the grim reaper) is the narrator of this book, and it is reading this whole story from a book about Liesel. It is sometimes comical, but has the annoying habit of telling what is going to happen in the book before it happens. One example of it doing this is: " ***A Little Something to Dampen the Euphoria*** She had gotten away with nothing. The mayor's wife had seen her, all right. She was just waiting for the right moment."
1)
My book is historical nonfiction, a memoir of the Blumenthal family. I can tell it's a memoir because the author has interviewed Ruth Blumenthal, the mother of the family, and Marion the younger sister in the family. I say it's historical nonfiction because the story is focused mostly on the family's time during the Holocaust, which is a historical event.
2)
Four Perfect Pebbles begins mostly through the perspective of Marion. She's a sweet girl, whose childhood is taken from her while she lives through the Holocaust.
“In our haste to cover up what we were doing, {cooking soup in the barracks} we tipped over the pot, and the boiling soup spilled across my leg, scalding the lower part from knee down. I was just a few months past my tenth birthday, but I did not utter a sound. I knew better than to cry out.”
How many four grade student do you know who can have boiling water on their legs and not utter a sound? I don't even know many adults who can stay quiet through that. It shows that she disciplined herself through her time in the concentration camps, even though concentration camps don't give much choice but to toughen up. She has to grow up quickly and loses her childhood in the process.
“I was not ready to say farewell to the childhood I had never had. I wanted sweets and games. I wanted to be as carefree as my nine-year-old classmates, who knew nothing of deadly concentration camp in which I had spent the ninth and tenth years of my childhood.”
You also meet Ruth Blumenthal, the mother. Ruth was like any other mother. She cared first for her children, her husband and then herself. She also held onto the past, like most woman seemed to do during the holocaust. At one part, Marion describes the family going to the Death Trains near the end of the war and the Nazis were excavating prisoners of Bergen-Belsen.
“Mama too, carried a knapsack with personal belongings and precious documents, receipts, letters, and mementos, including our old family photographs.”
The receipts that Marion mentioned were the the receipts the family got when they stowed the family belongings and furniture in Rotterdam, a port Dutch port. This port was captured and destroyed when the Nazis invaded Holland, before the family got their possessions back. The receipts were useless, yet they were a mementos for a time long past.
The other characters in the book are Walter and Albert Blumenthal, Marion's father and brother. Walter was a strong willed, proud man before the Holocaust. By the end of the Holocaust, he was a whipped horse, disappointed in himself for letting his family down.
“Before our life in the camps Papa was a proud and disciplined man, always very exacting and in control of ever situation. During Bergen-Belsen, especially, it must have hurt him terribly to watch his family suffer and to be unable to help us. Once he had been a heroic defender of our country and a respected businessman as well as a loving and caring father. But the Nazi system broke him down and robbed him of his self-esteem.”
He did do as much for his family, like trading cigarettes for the other prisoners' food rations and giving them to Mama and Marion, as he could.
Albert also tried to help his family as much as he could during their stay in the camp. After his father died in the last wave of typhus to hit the refugees who were staying in Tröbitz after liberation, Albert became the man of he house and did everything he could for his widowed mother and Marion, who was injured with and infected leg burn at the time.
“Somehow Mama and Marion were helped onto the back of one of the open trucks. Albert was to join them. But as usual he was out somewhere gathering a supply of food for the journey. As the time for departure came closer, Mama wrung her hands in despair... At the very last moment he came running with his knapsack full, and he clamored aboard.”
He was like his mother in that he wanted to keep things that reminded him of better times. The knapsack he kept with him, he had had since their first stay in Holland, which was before their six year imprisonment in Bergen-Belsen.
1. “ Number the Stars” is a nonfiction book . It took place in Copenhagen. I determined this when it said in the 7th paragraph “as we sped along the street called Osterbrogade, past the small shops and cafes of her neighborhood here in northeast Copenhagen.”.
2. Annemarie Johansen was one of the first characters that I met while reading this book. She is a girl who has blonde hair and loves to run and hang out with her friend Ellen. Annemarie also gets worried a lot. When her mother tells her that they are going to say that Ellen is there daughter and that Ellen’s parents would be gone for a little while, she got worried that Ellen would never see her parents again, and that the German soldiers would figure out that Ellen wasn’t really her sister.
Ellen is Annemarie’s best friend. Ellen is a Jewish girl, with brown hair, and Jewish parents. When there parents here about the capture of Jews and how a lot of the Jew owned shops are closing down, she goes to stay with Annemarie’s family. While she is there, the German’s come in and Ellen has to remove her Star of David and hide it. The German soldiers came in the Johansen’s apartment and searched. They saw that there were two blonde haired girls and one brown haired one. The questioned Anne Marie’s parents and because of her fathers quick thinking, they didn’t take her away.
Kirsti is the youngest out of the 3 girls. She is a blonde haired girl that hate when tings don’t go her way. When she and her sister, Annemarie, and Ellen get stopped on the street, one of the German soldiers touched her hair and she yelled at them. Kirsti also loves to talk, this helps her out a lot. When ever she gets questioned by the Germans all she has to do is talk a lot and the realize that she is just a cute little girl that doesn’t know what is going on
1. I think Stones in Water is an autobiography history book. The reason I think this is because in the book Roberto tells his story about being taken to the consentration camps and split from his friends except one. He talks about what he went through also. I also think that this is an autobiography history book because it is writen in first person.
2. Memo is a sly, persuasive kinda guy. I think this because in the book he tells his friend Roberto that he will pay for his movie ticket if he gives him and his next girl a ride on the gondola.
Roberto, the main character, is a very cautious guy and he doesn't want to feel alone. Him and his friends try to stick together no matter what and hes glad that he gets to stay with one. Also sense his friend Samuele (who now goes by Enzo because his real name is Jewish) is a jew he is always watching out for him and trying to keep him alive and outta trouble.
Enzo(Samuele) is Jewish and a daredevil. He risked his life to go swimming and this is because all jews were sercumsized and they all swam naked. He also cares very much for his friends by trying his best to stay with Roberto and by telling him to keep most of his food even when he was running short.
Sergio is Roberto's older brother and he is a pertective guy. He tells his brother to walk with his other friend instead of Enzo(samuele) so they dont get in trouble and he tells Enzo to take off his arm band so he will be harder to spot as a Jew.
Number of Stars By Lois Lowry
1. The genre of my book is historical fiction. It is about actually events that happened during World War II in Denmark, but the characters and actual plot of the story were created by the author, Lois Lowry. In the back of the book, there is an Afterward. Here, Lowry tells about her friend, Annelise Platt, and a resistance leader, Kim Malthe-Bruun, which she based some of her characters on. I know it is fiction, not just because Lowry says so, but because the Nazis seem too nice. In the movies and Night, a Nazi would have probably shot-up the coffin and smacked Kristi for pushing away his hand, but here, they didn't. They just left their suspicions of the coffin alone and "let his harsh pose slip" to smile at Kristi.
2. The main character is Annemarie Johansen. She is ten-years-old, lanky, has "silvery blond hair", like all the children in the Johansen family, and very athletic, which is shown in her desire to win a meet, " ... I was second last week, but I've been practicing every day.' " Annemarie is very truthful about herself, because when she asks herself if she would die to protect Ellen and when her uncle asks the same question, she says she's not sure. She is based on the author's friend, Annelise Platt.
The next important character is Annemarie's best friend, Ellen Rosen. She is Jewish and comes to live with the Johansens when the Nazis come to take away the Jews. She has dark-brown hair, which almost gives her away when the Nazis come to see the Rosens are hiding with the Johansens, and is "a stocky ten-year-old" and a "talented performer", as Annemarie describes her. She is impersonating the Johansen's oldest daughter, Lise.
Other important characters are the rest of the Johansen family, especially Mama and Kristi. Annemarie's father has only been in the story for the first few chapters, but he is the one who told Annemarie about how everyone in Denmark would die for their king, and made her wonder whether she would die for Ellen. Kristi is Annemarie's little sister, who "Sometimes, Annemarie thought, Kristi was such a pest, always butting in..." and, usually, people are scared that she is going to give away secrets, like Ellen being a Jew. Mama is a brave and smart woman, because she decided to take the girls alone to Uncle Henrik and not have Papa go because, as she said to him, "If only go with the girls, it will be safer. They are unlikely to suspect a woman and her children. But if they are watching us- if they see all of us leave?.. I am not afraid to go alone."
There is also Uncle Henrik and Peter. Uncle Henrik is a fisherman who lives where her a Mama grew up. He is a kind man and is helping smuggle Jewish across the river to Sweden; which you can sea from his house. Peter is Annemarie and Kristi's almost-brother-in-law. Was going to marry Lise, but she was hit by a car three years ago before the wedding. He has red hair, and was like their "fun-loving older brother" before, but now he seems "older and very tired, defeated" and would never just come to their home to hang out. He is helping Jews escape by bringing them to Uncle Henrik. He gave Papa a code phrases, "a carton a cigarettes" and "fishing weather," to use with Henrik. I think "carton of cigarettes" refers to a Jew that is being brought to be smuggled away, but I'm not sure what good fishing weather means; maybe it asks if it is safe?
Daniel's Story
Carol Matas
1. The story I am reading is historical fiction. The author says that Daniel is not a real person but is based on a true story.
2. Daniel is the main character and he is fifteen years old and he is currently living in the concentration camp Auschwitz. He is really skinny from the poor rations that he gets to eat. He has just survived a typhus infection. The father becomes the secondary character in the book. He and Daniel were separated from the mother and Erika when they arrived in Auschwitz. The father is building up relationships with as many people as possible that way if they need anything they can trade for it. The father is getting beat when he or Daniel do something wrong. Erika is the sister. She is a violinist. She plays her violin while the men walk to and back from work. She is very skinny and is barely holding on to life. When she sees Daniel and her father she starts trying to survive again. The mother is killed when they get to Auschwitz. She was killed soon after they arrived. She was ill when they left Lodz.
The genre of "Escape or Die" is autobiographic. I know this because in the stories the narrator uses words like "I", "we", and "my".
With this book be ing a collection of people's accounts, it's hard to describe all the characters. What they all have in common is that they are all young, being no older than eight-teen and some as young as ten during WWII. Also, they're all Jews. Aside from that they all were affected differently during the war. The last story I read was about a Ukrainian boy, who at the beginning of the story was ten, and his family escaped from their town when the Nazis attacked. Soon after they were captured by mercenaries and taken to Aushwitz and was subject to testing . Over a period eight years he he escaped and recaptured many times, each time being recaptured he was subjected to worse and worse tests. At the end of the story it said that he was one of the few to survive the kind of testing he was put through.
Paige G.
The genre of Number the Stars is more of a story coming from the main characters point of view. I think it would be a novel, but I am honestly not sure. I chose this genre because its not a romantic, historical, or experimental, because it is truth, but in a short story to try and explain the story of what happened to everyone.
The characters that we have met are Annemarie Johansen, her best friend Ellen Rosen. The mothers of Annemarie and Ellen, and Annemarie's sister Kirsti. Later on we meet Annemaries uncle Henrick who uses the excuse to go “fishing” to help and move the Jews back and forth to their other family members. Annemarie's mother and her uncle Henrick lie to ensure that they will be confident if the Germans come to their home asking questions than where they wouldn't know anything having to do with helping the Jews than they would be more confident and believable when being asked questions. Ellen is scared because during most of the story it is her and her family that the Germans are after, and when she was separated from her parents she beings to lose confidence and hope.
"Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl"
My book is a diary. It is the diary of Anne Frank during the Holocaust. I know this because it says it in the title and every entry starts "Dear Kitty", which is what she named her diary. It is written in first person. I know this because she says things such as "Our whole class..." and "I get along quite well with..."
I have met Anne, who is the narrator. She is a young girl who is Jewish and living in the Holocaust. Life was tough for her and her family. I know because she says "The rest of our family, however, felt the full impact of Hitler's anti-Jewish laws, so life was filled with anxiety."
"Number the Stars" is fiction not non fiction....Sorry!
1. The genre of Maus is a comic book; at least the book is setup like a comic book is. The book is also known as a graphic novel and a memoir of Art Speigelman’s father surviving the holocaust. I can determine this because each page has a set number of boxes and has pictures with caption above their heads showing what they are thinking or saying. In the beginning it says that he is going to interview his dad about surviving the holocaust.
2. The main characters we have met are Vladek Speigelman and Art Speigelman. Art is interviewing his dad Vladek in modern times about the holocaust. Vladek was a successful businessman in Poland before the holocaust occurred. When World War 2 started, Vladek was drafted and was captured by nazi troops in his first engagement on the frontlines.
"In Kindling Flame"
Genre- Biography
I determined that this because this tells the story of Hannah Senesh using diary entries from her life. The book explains her life and the kind of things that she was exposed to.
In the book you meet Hannah and read small bits and pieces about her father, mother and brother.
Hannah is an excellent student, she was a straight A student and some seemed to think of her as a goody two shoes type, but she knew what she wanted to do in life, so she was determined to do her best. In a way she reminds me a lot of myself, when it comes to school work, there was one entry that stated that she was worried about a project that she got a B on, she wanted to plead with the teacher to see if she could redo it.
Hannah's brother was a couple of years older then her, but he seems nice, her diary entries she has spoke highly of her brother. I think that she was very close to her brother for she speaks about him a lot in the entries that were quoted in the book.
Her father was her hero. He was a very busy business man, but he was a very devoted to his children, no matter what he was doing, he would always talk and play games with them at night and Sunday afternoon. When he was young he contracted an illness which would horribly shorten his life, but he lived it to the fullest. The man, named Bela Senesh, reminds me of a character from the book "To Kill a Mockingbird," Atticus Finch, the father.
Hannah's mother was very much like Hannah's father. She was very devoted to her children and would do anything to make sure that they had the best life possible. "...[Hannah's] mother paid the tuition for Hannah's Schooling... [which] was three times as much as normal students who were not Jewish." I loved how devoted she was to her children.
1. "Surviving Hitler" is classified as a non-fiction book. I thought this fit the book because there are real life pictures of people from the book.
2. Jack Mandelbaum is the main character in the book. Jack is not the narrator of the story, but it does show many, many quotes that he has said. Jack is said to be 12 years old. Jack has naturally curly blonde hair and blue eyes. His sister Jadzia was three years older than Jack. She had long black hair and dark eyes, just like her mother. She was said to be a very gentle and kind person. It also talks about Majloch Mandelbaum, (Max) his father. The only thing it says about max is that he was strong, brave and heroic. Jacks mother, Cesia was a very elegant women. She had long black hair, and dark eyes. She is said to have been the heart of their home. The last character mentioned in the book is the house keeper. She was a good natured person and very beautiful.
1. We Are Witnesses; Five Diaries of Teenagers who died in the Holocaust, is partially diary and history. An obvious give away toward the genre is the title that automatically states it is a diary before you read the book. Once you get into the text, you will notice entries of teenagers writing about their experiences in the Holocaust through these diaries. “January 8, 1942. In the afternoon I learned that there’d been two more Jewish victims in Bodzentyn. One was killed outright and the other wounded. They arrested the wounded man and took him to the local police in Bieliny, and there they’ll probably kill him to death.” The author Jacob Boas was also a Jew that survived the Holocaust, “After you have been guided through these personal accounts by Jacob Boas, who is a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, my hope is that you will take the time to reflect, to look inward, then perhaps reach out. It is my belief that when you’ve read the last page, that’s when the stories really begin.” Having Jacob walk you through the diary entries, you maintain deep insight of historical dates which makes the genre history. Jacob Boas tells the individual stories of these five teenagers through facts and shows you their diary documentation. In the introduction he writes, “Adolf Hitler set out to change the world from the ground up. The German leader dreamed of creating an empire that would last a thousand years and declared that millions of Jewish men, women, and children would have to be killed to being it about. When he gas stopped pouring and the guns fell silent, six million Jews lay dead. A fourth of these were children…The Nazi justified the murder of children on the ground that it was impossible to destroy a weed with out yanking out the root. Since children were the “germ cell” from which a new Jewish danger could grow, their destruction was considered a must. Without it, the Nazi asserted, the war could not be won, the Jew would conquer the world, and “his crown,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), the bible of the Nazi movement, would become the funeral wreath of humanity.”
2.My book is a series of short stories of teenagers who died in the Holocaust through diary entries and historical background from the author. In the first story, I met the Rubinowicz family. David Rubinowicz was born in Kielce on July 17, 1927. However, he grew up in Karajno, Poland. He was fifteen when he died in a concentration camp. David was very compassionate and sensitive boy. This is shown through his tears, “I feel like bursting into tears, and today I must stay at home and can’t go anyway.“ “I was very upset at him beating me without cause. And finally, when he’d beaten me so hard several times with his belt buckle, I began crying, not so much out of pain as anger. I got real bruises that hurt badly. Finally he ordered me to start grinding. But how could I grind when my arm hurt so much I couldn’t movie it?…Father doesn’t love me at all, and he wouldn’t be sorry if something happened to me. All he feels is his duty; it doesn’t cross his mind there might be more to it than that. David could not forget the beating, or the thoughts he had about his father.” This shows that David is not forgiving and is angry. It also shows that Josek Rubinowicz is both angry and strict, “Josek Rubinowicz was an old-fashioned man, accustomed to obedience and by nature somewhat irritable. The strain on the head of the household was enormous. One day Josek Rubinowicz’s nerves snapped.” Despite all the anger and hostility, David and Josek loved each other and were very close, “I burst out crying, and as they came up, I cried out: Papa! Papa, where are you? If only I could see you once more…And then I saw him on the last truck; his eyes were red with weeping.”
We also meet Tauba, David’s mother, Herszel, David’s younger brother, and Malka, David’s younger sister, but the book only mentions them once.
The second story that I read was about a boy named, Yitzahak Rudashevski, who is the only character named in the story. Yitzahak was born on December 10, 1927 in Vilna, Poland. He died in 1943 in a concentration camp. Yitzahak was very intelligent for his age. He often relied on reality, which made him angry but because he had so much wisdom, he was also compassionate. “He attended a school that used a new curriculum and wrote his diary in Yiddish. Yitzahak and his fellow Jews in Vilna drew strength from their progressive culture, which helped them fight back when discrimination and persecution turned into murder…The Hitlerisms have attacked our land. They have forced a war upon us. And so we shall retaliate, and strike until we shall smash the aggressor on his own soil. I keep looking at the calm Red Army soldier who is standing on guard in our yard. I feel that I can be sure of him; I see he will not perish. He will perhaps be killed, but the star attached t his hat will remain forever…Tears come to my eyes: All our helplessness, all our loneliness lies in the streets…The final words of the diary: We may be fated for the worst.”
1. The book I am reading is an autobiography. I can tell this because it is told in first person. The author, Irene Gut Opdyke, is describing her experiences of growing up in Poland. She tells of the places she went and what she went through to get back home to her family.
2. I have met a few characters so far in the book. The main character Irene, is a very strong young lady. At a young age, only seventeen, she steps up and helps out with the hopital. Even after she has been taken by the Germans she keeps her head up. Irena escapes from the hopital she is forced to work in and hides out in a house with someone for over a year. She is risking getting caught, and getting into big trouble, so she can get home and be with her family. Irena has to go through a lot before she gets to where she wants to go. This shows her determination, and how she was such a strong person. I have also met Dr. David who worked at the hospital Irena was forced to work in. He helps her escape the hospital, Dr. David finds a friend that will take her in. This shows what a caring and compassionate person he was. If he had been caught doing this, he might have been killed.
I think that No Pretty Pictures is an autobiography book. I think this because it talks about how she got separated from her family and how they had to keep moving so they wouldn't be found. I also think it's an autobiography because it is written in first person.
I have met the main character, Hanusia, who was seven years old in the beginning of the book. She seems to be convincing, worried, and protective because she's always watching out for her little brother. You hear about her little brother, who had to be dressed as a girl to he was more safe. The mother gets separated from her children and Niania, the nanny. Whenever the mother goes to where her children her, trouble seems to follow and they have to leave again. Niania is a close friend of the family and she takes care of the children. She tells everyone they are her children because they are Jewish and she isn't.
1. The Holocaust Kid is a fictional novel. Besides the fact that the back of the book refers to the author as a novelist, I know it's not an autobiography because the author's name is Sonia Pilcer and the main character's name is Zosha. The story is also told from a third person limited point of view, so that also cancels out autobiography. It's a story about a fictional character, Zosha, whose parents moved to America with Zosha when she was only a year old. It tells of Zosha's life as part of the “second generation,” or daughter of Holocaust survivors. In the acknowledgments Sonia Pilcer says, “My parents' circle of survivors have surrounded my life. I feel privileged to be among their scribes.” I think that quote shows that she used a lot of real information to write the story, but she mixed it with fictional characters.
2. The main character is Zosha, a young jewish woman whose parents survived the Holocaust. She is fascinated, or rather obsessed with the history of the Holocaust, and she feels like it's a big part of her life. She writes a few poems that she reads during Yom Hashoah, or Day of Remembrance, at Temple Emanu-El. The last verse of one of those poems says, “Six million Jews died and I was born. A child of the universe. Always, a child of the Holocaust.” She is also a managing editor of a gossip magazine called Movie Screen, but she would rather be collecting information about the Holocaust and writing about that.
The Holocaust Kid flashes back to the to times during the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's when Genia and Heniek, Zosha's parents, were younger and trying to get out of Germany and raise a child. Genia survived a concentration camp and Heniek had survived Auschwitz. They had met at a dance that was held by the Czestochowa Society of Heroes , Martyrs, and Refugees and married a year later. They had Zosha and lived in a barracks in Landsberg, Germany until they got papers allowing them to move to America. There, Heniek seemed hardened from the Holocaust, and the book explains how he wouldn't let Genia work in America. He says “I'll pay more taxes than you can earn.” Genia loves fashion and designs her own clothes.
The Upstairs Room
By Johanna Reiss
This stories genre is a historical fiction, because even thought the story is based on the author experience in world war 2, the characters are fictional. I know this because the authors name is Johanna and the main character in the book is named Annie. I know that the events in the book are all real and they all took place but the characters are made up. They resemble the author and her sister but they just aren't the same people.
The main characters in this story are Annie, Sini, Rachel, Opoe, Johan, and Dientje. Annie is a young Jewish girl who is barely old enough to understand what is going on around her. She lived with her mother, father, and two sisters named Sini and Rachel. She is the youngest and she doesn't understand why the Germans are so mean. She has said “All the radio ever talked about is Hitler. He must have been important man in Germany. Why didn't he like German Jews?” She is like any other child who wants to run around and play, and she finds it extremely difficult hiding from Germans in peoples houses. Sini is one of the older sister, she goes with Annie when they hide in the farm of Opoe, Johan, and Dientje. A small Germany farm family that hides Annie and Sini, we don't know much about them just that they are going to be major of characters.
Echoes From The Holocaust
A memoir
Mira Ryczke Kimmelman
The genre of my book is autobiography because Mira’s telling the story. She’s telling the reader what she felt, experienced, what she had to go through during the holocaust. You can tell this because the narration is obviously in first person.
I’ve met the main character of the book, Mira. As of right now in the book Mira’s 22 and in Bergen-Belsen . She is very smart and strong. Since it’s an autobiography she mentions other people but doesn’t really get into a lot of detail about them. Mostly in the beginning you met her family which is her mum, dad, and baby brother. Her parents sounded like they were hard working to try and have a good stable life. “My parents took me sleigh riding for the first time. My mother took part in guiding the sled, and with me in the back she ran into a pole”. Even though they were hard working they also sound like they had a good time when they were together. Benno, her brother was five years younger.
The Genre of my book is fiction. I determined this genre by looking on the book.
Annemarie is a skinny blonde girl. Her legs are very long. PG # 1: “ “ Go!” shouted Annemarie, and the two girls were off, racing along the residential sidewalk. Anemarie's silvery blond hair flew behind her, and Ellen's dark pigtails bounced against her shoulders.”
Ellen ( Annemarie's friend) Ellen has dark medium hair. PG# 1 “ and Ellen's dark pigtails bounced against her shoulders” Ellen is also Jewish. How I know this is because in the book it says that she wears a gold star around her neck.
Mama ( Annemarie's mother) Mama seems as though she just looks out for the best interest of her children. Very protective. I say this because in the first couple chapters when Ellen and Annemarie and Kristi were running on the sidewalk and got stopped by the soldiers,Ellen and Annemarie told Mama and Mama told Annemarie and Ellen to not go that route anymore. Mama did not want Ellen and Annemarie to be seen by the soldiers again. The reason that she did not want Ellen and Annemarie to be seen by the soldiers again because Ellen is Jewish. If the soldiers see that Ellen is jewish they will take Ellen away.
1. The genre of my book is novel because the book tells you what happened when the jews had to go and live with other people and hide out in other homes or they would be sent to concentration camps.
2. The characters that I have met in this book are father who liked to listen to the radio. Mother who is very sick. Annie who is the little girl that is telling the story. Rachel who wants to be a teacher. Sini who worked on a farm with her father. The Hanninks who are a family that took in Annie and Sini while they were in hiding. The Oostervelds who are another family who took care of the girls while they were in hiding.
In Kindling Flame
by Linda Atkinson
“There were four of them. Reuven,Yonah,Abba,and Hanna. Four young Jews on their way to Hitler's europe. each had escaped and found safety and freedom but now, on the thirteenth of march,1944,they were going back trained to fight the british.”
The setting is in europe in 1944 they are going back to try to fight the British and help stop the nazis and hitler. They are kind of undercover for germany. Sending info back to the German forces about what was happening in “Hitler's Europe” they have been trained to fight. use guns and radio
transmitters.
yes I think it could happen any where even thought nothing at that mass has happen it kind of did right here in America.
“My Brother's Voice” by Stephen Nasser
1.This story is Stephen Nasser's autobiography of his life during the holocaust and how he survived it. I determined the book's genre by studying the narrators point of view and who was telling the story. “I'm halfway dead from hunger, it's been this way for month's.” Stephen Nasser was telling the story using first person narrator which made it obvious that it's a story about his life.
2.I have met Stephen Nasser, nicknamed Pista, and his Jewish family of four. Stephen is the narrator of the book, who is thirteen when the Nazi's take him away from his home in Hungary. He is then shipped to a concentration camp in Aushwitz. I met his brother, Andris, who is his closest family member. He's tall, dark and strong, about sixteen years old when the Holocaust started. He was an outstanding soccer player, and an excellent student. He's the only thing that that Stephen has left after his father died and his mother was shipped to a different concentration camp along with various other relatives of his. His fathers name is Dezso. He happens to die of a heart attack before they are shipped out of their home and into a ghetto. Stephen believes he had it better off that way. “My father died that previous year. Maybe he was the lucky one in our family.” Before he died, he was very well dressed and he owned a jewelry store, thats been passed down in his family for generations. He was a big guy, muscular and buff. He was also “well groomed, with a high forehead, strong jaw and a cleft in his chin.” To receive a more detailed image. I have met Stephen's mother whose name is Georgia. She is beautiful, slender, graceful and always “impeccably dressed.” She has long wavy, brown hair, and a gentle smile.
1. My book is Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders. It's genre is history. I know it is a history book because it is all based on facts and numbers. The book tells you what happened in concentration camps and why certain events happened without any opinion. It tells you these things as information, not really as stories.
2. The most important character described in the book is Adolf Hitler. He is talked about on nearly every page, and I think this is because he is the main reason any problems with Jews ever happened. Also, the book talks about Dr. Walter Durrfeld. Durrfeld was the chief engineer at the I.G. Farben chemical combine. The book says that IG Farben was one of the largest enterprises in the entire country of Germany. Also, the book talks about a lot of characters who aren't mentioned as individuals, but are mentioned as groups. Groups like Gestapos, SS officers, and Jews are mentioned as groups, not individual people. Some are mentioned as groups, then a few select people are mentioned individually. The Newcomers were people who joined Hitler's political party but had a few different qualities like age. "The newcomers were, on average, younger than their more established competitors. Any number of men in the new power centers were born in the 20th century." Polizei Himmler, Martin Bormann, Abert Speer, Reinhard Heydrich, Josef Buhler, Eberhard Westerkamp, Friedrich Siebert, and a lot more men are a handful of people from the newcomers.
In Voices of the holocaust the different type of story’s in the book are Poetry, Short stories, Biography, and letters and Autobiography’s.
Some of the characters that I met in the short story “The Ball” were the narrator and Friedrich who was a small Jewish boy. The narrator had been playing ball with the boy and throwing it back and forth until Friedrich was not paying attichion when the narrator threw the ball and smashed out a window of a shop that’s when people started to say that the boy was a thief and was up to no good because he was Jewish. The narrator told them that it was him who broke the window but no one would believe him because they thought that the Jewish boy was getting him to say that because they could not be trusted by anyone because of there ways. When they found the ball they thought that the little boy stole it and they were going to take him away but his Father tried to make it so his son was released so he begged the officer to let him go and that he would pay for the damage that was done as long as he could get his son back.
MAUS
Anja is a was a kid and he group and he was a mole kid at first if he just met you but the more thymus he tock to you the more he would tock to you his ad was a grouch he did not tock a lot he was not that nice to his sun he was an old bag as anja sad in the book and he had lock down on his sun. and won he got mad at anja he sad good dam you.
Four Perfect Pebbles
by Lila Pearl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan
1.This story is an autobiography, because Marion and the one who is mostly telling her story. But sometimes Lila Pearl with explain things too. Marion is the one who is telling a real life story about her life in a concentration camp with her family,Walter her dad, Ruth her mom, and her brother Albert.
2. Walter Blumenthal was a caring father to his son and daughter and also a caring husband to Ruth. This is a letter Walter set to his wife and kids that he wrote while he was in Buchenwald. "My loved ones, I am,thank god, healthy and hope the same t you. Don't write to me because there is no incoming...Don't send money. Hope our two darlings are well again. Hugs and kisses to you all. Walter, Papa."
Ruth Blumenthal was a person who would do just about anything to save a family member. She went out in the night and hid Walter's gun so that the Gestapo wouldn't find it and take him away or shoot him for having one in possession. This is the paragraph where Ruth is explaining how she hid the gun. ""so on that evening, we took the revolver and wrapped it in many layers of paper. Then, very late, we went out and walked to a nearby park where there was n artificial lake. We were very careful that nobody saw us and we dropped it into the lake."
Marion Blumenthal is a younger kid, she is the main character and the youngest child. Marion is also very creative and imaginative. She collected rocks that represented her family and she believed it would keep them together. "Over and over Marion had collected such pebbled in groups of four, terrifying herself when she could find only two or three and not a forth that matched."
Albert Blumenthal is a character that isn't talked about very often. He is the oldest child in the Blumenthal family.
I am reading “The Diary of A Young Girl Anne Frank” This book is a diary that Anne Frank had written when she was growing up in the Holocaust with her family. Anne started off saying, “To enhance the image of this long-awaited friend in my imagination, I don’t want to jot down the facts in this diary the way most people would do, but I want the diary to be my friend, and I’m going to call this friend Kitty.” Anne writes about what new things have been happening in her life. Anne is the narrator, making it first person. I know this because she uses word like “Now whenever we want to go down stairs we have to duck and then jump.” Anne also says things like Mother and Mrs. van Daan .”
The characters I have met are Anne, who is a young girl growing up in the Holocaust and writing about her day to day life stories. I’ve met her father who wants Anne to start reading books by Hebbal and other well-known German writers. I’ve met her mother who Anne doesn’t really get along with. Anne’s sister Margot I have also met.
my book is autobiography. I determine that by the why the way that the book is told.
The characters in my book are kind of like informants working for the british army.
The Dairy of a young girl- Anne Frank
1.The genre of my book is autobiography. It is autobiography because it is Annes diary and she is talking about her experiences and her feelings in the Secret Annexe.
2.The characters that I met so far in the story is Anne Frank who is very smart. Living in fear that they might be discovered. Hopes that her family and friends could see that she is grown up and stop treating her like a little girl. Her daddy and her mommy is to other characters I met in the story. Her dad takes control when something goes wrong in the Secret Annexe. Her mother is very emotional and always takes annes sister Margaret's side if they get into a fight. Margaret is older then Anne. She is the reason why they went into hiding because the letter they got was for Margaret not her dad. Mr and Mrs van dan are living in the upper level of the hide out. They have a son name Peter and he gets into trouble all the time because when his mom and dad told him not to read a certain book he would sneak upstairs and start reading the book for the first couple of times he did not get caught but when the called for him and he did not answer they went upstairs and caught him reading the book. There is one last character that lives in the Secret Annexe with them he did not start living there until a couple of weeks after they were living there his name is Mr Dussel you is a dentist. He looked over Mrs van dan for a check up and say that her tooth was rotted so he stared to scrap away at it and got the tool stuck in her mouth. He lives in Annes room because there is two beds in her room.
1. The book I am reading is called Perpetrators, Victims, and Bystanders by Raul Hilberg
2. The setting in this book is mainly in 1930s and 1940s Germany. I know this because of the quote: "Hitler preoccupied himself with vestiges of the Jewish presence in Germany. As of April in 1940, he dismissed half Jews with certain exceptions from the army." This shows that the setting is around 1940 in Germany. Later the book goes until May 1st, 1945, when Hitler killed himself. The setting also includes concentration camps, where a lot of the book takes place because a lot of the book is about the holocaust. Some other things that should be mentioned about the setting are that the book doesn't really have one setting because it tells about lots of places. Poland and Ukraine can be settings because they are places that the book mentions as places Germany wanted to take land from. The setting is very crucial because if the setting wasn't in this exact place and time, there wouldn't be as much hate towards Jewish people and others that were victims of the holocaust. Hitler had most of the control over Germany at that time, which is why there was a lot of prejudice.
oops I put my second blog post on the third blog sorry...
The book Friedrich's genre is historical fiction. I can tell it is this genre because it talks about events in the past like how some people were deported and killed because tehy were jewish. I also know it is fiction because the events that happened in the book ae not events in real life.
There are many characters I have met. There are two main family's in the book, there are the Schnieders who live on the third floor of the appartment. They are a jewish family that consists of Friedrich the son, Frau who is the wife and motehr and Herr Schnieder who is the father and husband. The major family who lives on the second floor is the who's names are not really told they only say mother, father and I. These two family's know each other very well and are together through most of the book.
1.10000 children is a history book. I think so because it is true stories about the holocaust from children that were sent to England on the Kindertransport.
2.Some characters that i have met are Karla who is from Berlin, the capitol of Germany. She is an eleven year old when the night of kristallnacht happened. ''on one November night,our lives and the lives of all Jews in Germany changed forever. That night ,the Nazis smashed all the store fronts of Jewish businesses, beat the owners,broke into homes, destroyed property, and took many Jewish men and boys to the police station.'' Another character is Ruth who was born in cologne Germany. She was a dark skinned young girl and often got made fun of and was called a dirty Jew. The short story is about her most favorite birthday gift ever. An orange was the gift. she had not eaten much in the few months she was there. Not even the orange her mother gave her for her birthday. These children are real survivors of the kindertransport. They are some of the children in the book i am reading
In my book “ Ten Thousand Children” were a girl named Susie from Frankfurt, Germany who was sent to England with a new family where she was safe from the Nazis.
There where kids from Poland who also where sent to England to be safe from the Nazis. Because my book is made up of short stories written by kids in the time period sent on kinder transports it does not have one specific setting. The settings are crucial & incidental because the kinder transports could happen today to any kids in the world, But the ones made reference in the book had to happen there and in that time period.
“The other Victims” is historical nonfiction
So far I have met Regina,17 who is a German who is married to a jew, Karl. Karl is older than Regina and he is a doctor. The book doesn't give a very detailed description of either of them. Also the book introduces us to Franziska 16 year old deaf German girl. She is described with blue eyes and blond hair, An ideal member of the “perfect race” that Hitler describes, although, she is deaf. She recieves a letter from the courts saying that she has to be sterilized because she is deaf.
1. The book “I am a Star” is autobiography. I could tell this by what she said in the first chapter of her book. She told about her family and gave details of herself. The book also has many pictures of her.
2. The main character in “I am a Star” is Inge Auerbacher. At a young age she and her family were captured as prisoners and sent to a concentration camp during 1942. Inge and her family had loved Germany. That’s why they stayed instead of leaving when they had the chance. They really didn’t know what they had to look at in the future though. Inge and her family were taken from their home in 1942 then moved to the concentration camp located in Czechoslovakia. She went through very harsh times and they were not released until 1945. There were no other characters thoroughly described in this story. She gave a very brief summary of her family. She also gave a very brief summary about her leader at the concentration camp. Inge was a young girl with brown hair and brown eyes.
1.The book I read was called
Friedrich. It was a historical fiction. I think it was thins because it’s about things that happened back then but the story is about a made up family.
2. In the book I read the characters we met were Friedrich, Herr, Frau, I, Mother and Father. The main characters where Friedrich and I.
My book is autobiography. I determine that by the why the way that the book is told. The characters in my book are kind of like informants working for the british army. Hanna left “Hitler's world” when she was young and went to Palestine. She is now returning to help out the jewish people. Hanna is a very strong girl and knows how to defend her self agents the nazi troops. she is the only character that really has been described in the story so fare.
Serena said,
The genre of Number the stars is a story coming from a main characters point of view. I thought it was a novel. I chose this genre because it is not one of the lame fiction books people normally read, it was based on a true story and it was something I could kind of relate to.
The characters we have met are AnneMarie Johanson, her best friend Ellen Rosen. The mothers of Annemarie and Ellen, and Annemarie's sister Kirsti then we finally meet Annemaries uncle Hendrick, who goes "fishing" to help and move the jews back and forth to their family members.
this is the redo of my other #2
2.In my book we meet Friedrich- who is a 12 year old jewish boy. He lives in germany with his family in the time when the nazis started hating jews. Herr- who is Friedrichs father, His name is Herr because that is what most men where called. Frau- who is Friedrichs mother. She is a fun mom, she likes to play in the snow with her son. We meet a boy who's name isn't said. He is the narrator of the story and Friedrichs friend. Then we meet Mother and Father who are the narrators parents. None of the family is jewish. They live next door to Friedrich. Fridrich and the boy become friends. The father is not a follower of hitler but when the germans come he often says “Hiel Hitler”. The mother stays t home and does chores and works around the house. They are poor and so is Fridrichs family.
The genre of Maus (Art Spiegalman) is historical biography. Art Spiegalman is documenting a chunk of his father's life, and turning it into a historically accurate book about the halocaust. I determined this by reading the first chapter, which describes that Art is writing a book about his father's life, and the portion he is writing about is the halocaust.
So far we have met Art Spiegalman, the author and illustrator of the book; his father Vladek Spiegalman, whom the book is being written about; Anja Spiegalman, Vladek's late wife and Art's mother; Richieu Spiegelman, Vladek and Anja's son who died during the halocaust; and Mala Spiegalman, a close friend that Vladek married after Anja died.
Art Spiegelman is the author of the book and one of the main characters. I noticed this when I read the inside cover of the book:
"Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself."
From that I also determined that Vladek (Art's father) is the main character of the book, and it is a biography about his life. The story he tells is about his life in Poland, and surviving through the halocaust as he watches his family and close friends around him die. Art is not very close with his father, a statement described in the first sentence of the book.
Anja Spiegelman is Vladek's wife. He get's married to her in the end of the first chapter. Anja's family is very wealthy and her father is a millionare. Anja committed suicide, which we learn on the first page of the book. With Anja, Vladek has his first child, Richeau. Richeau does not live very long throughout the book, so there's not much detail about him other than he is Vladek and Anja's first child, whom Art never met.
On the very first page we meet Mala Spiegelman. It described how Art's mother committed suicide and how he remarried Mala:
"He was remarried. Mala knew my parents in Poland before the war. She was a survivor too, like most of my parents' friends."
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