Hello all! Here I am with a rather weird post today...
several of you know about the ghastly Holocaust, a terrifying move filled with racism, stereotypes, and hate. Oddly, as much as Hitler's actions at the time disgust me, I'm always fascinated with the stories of people who had survived the Holocaust, and live to tell their stories to the world.
In my AP Euro Class, we're covering around the time of WW II, which mainly started because of Germany's Offensives toward the main European countries at the time: Great Britain, France, U.S.S.R, and other places, including the U.S.A. The other countries knew that the Genocide was happening, but they never knew the real effect until Camps like Auschwitz were set free. It's very sad, really, that they never realized how much torture that the Jews were put in.
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Anyway, back when I was in 8th grade, a holocaust survivor came and visited my Middle school, while several people started sobbing...or started being ignorant, I was pretty much trying to grasp every single word the man was saying. He was also selling a book, the whole story as to what he summarized. He'd autographed every book, in which about 200 people from my grade bought.
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I Actually have a collection of Holocaust Survival books. The Diary Of Anne Frank, which is not a survival story...but rather the survival of a diary written by The Beautiful Anne Frank at the time of the Holocaust, is one of them. The rest are Night by Elie Wiesel & Because of Romek, by David Faber. [He is the one who came to our school, he's a lovely old man, it's so inspiring to hear from him],
My mother thinks it's weird that I actually like to read these kinds of books, she usually asks what joy I get from reading those kind of books. It's not a joy for me, heck no. For me it's proof that even through so much, you should always hope that you'll get through the hard times. Our problems compared to the stories of Holocaust Survivors may seem minuscule, but really, we can apply the same terms to those same problems.
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I'll always find a sort of fascination in reading Holocaust survivor books, and things about the Holocaust, but at the same time, a sort of disgust fills me as well, it's bittersweet I guess.
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I'll always find a sort of fascination in reading Holocaust survivor books, and things about the Holocaust, but at the same time, a sort of disgust fills me as well, it's bittersweet I guess.
That's so amazing! I'd love it if a holocaust survivor visited my school. I had this obsession with finding out everything holocaust-related when I was 11. Not really things an 11 year old should be reading about (my friends were reading about ponies at that time) but oh well :D
ReplyDeleteAnd I guess my name makes me hard to identify since it's not my real name. It's ButterflyOpal (the one who's a unicorn)
Like you, I also like reading about the Holocaust. Have you ever read The Book Thief? It is an amazing book about the Holocaust, one of my most favorite books ever. It brought me to tears a whole bunch of times. All those crinkly pages in that book I have. :') When I hear about survivors of the Holocaust, I just cannot believe what pain they went through just because of their religion. Hitler was an evil man. Also in my 8th grade year, a survivor came to talk at the local college, so our school arranged a field trip for our grade to hear him. He was Dr. Robert Fisch, by the way. It amazed me, all those things he said. One thing that stuck with me for a long time was that though the German Nazis tortured him, he did not hate them enough to kill one. Once it was all over, he saw a poor and hungry German begging on the streets. He hesitated, thinking that he hated the Germans, but instead gave him some money. It's just all really sad, but happy at the same time. Yes, bittersweet is a great word for it, like you wrote. :)
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