I finished the book along time ago and I was waiting to do this blog topic to blog post #4 and it’s connections. After reading this book I made a connection to my life that I have never made before. The ending really changed my outlook on life. 

Also after reading this story the feeling that I had were like nothing I have ever felt before. When I read the paragraph when it talked about the soldiers telling them they were free I nearly cried. The amount of happiness I felt was more then I have ever felt before. After reading about all the terrible thing she had gone to, it feels great that it meant that they were all leading up to this happy moment. It opened my eyes and it made me realize how lucky I am to have what I have.

Living in Scarsdale life is very different ten what it was back in world war II. My siblings and I always get three meals a day everyday and almost never have to work but after reading this book I realized how lucky I am. I realized how good I have it, compared to other people who are less fortunate. The connection that I made to this book is that life can be so much harder. For Yanek and all the other millions of people in the Holocaust life was a living hell and here I am sitting with my family enjoying  life together. There was one line at the end of the book that made me realize this. It was when Yanek first got to Munich and he was given a bed and this was his reaction, “An American soldier led me upstairs to a big room filled with bunk beds and told me which one was mine. “How many other people do I have to share it with?” I asked him. He looked surprised. “ Nobody,” he Said. “it’s yours” A bed all to myself!”(248-249). This quote really shocked me when I read it because it showed me the affect the holocaust had had on him. He had been sharing beds for the past years that he was shocked when he got his own. Then the American soldier’s reaction was just like mine, it said he looked surprised and this was because he had never had to share a bed with anyone. This story has taught me so much about my life and it taught me something that I will never forget and it’s that not only should you enjoy life as much as you can, but never take things for granted because one day you could be throwing away a piece of bread because it is a few days old and the next it could mean your survival.

Even though I have finished my book already I am writing about the third quarter of it. A lot has happened so far and it  is a lot to handle. In this post I am going to be talking about the theme topics present in the book so far and especially in the third quarter. The first theme topic that I  will be discussing is morality. Throughout the book Yanek has come in contact with morality countless times. One example of it in the third quarter is when he had to decide whether or not he was going to help the boy who had fallen onto him and who  was about to die. In this instance Yanek had a decision to make based on his morality or moral universe, he could either save the boy and carry him even though it would be extremely hard and grueling or he could let the boy drop and die just like so many other people  during the march. One quote that shows this is when the boy originally falls on him and he makes the choice to save him. It is “I should never have helped the boy. I knew that. But now that I was helping his, I refused to let go”.(178) This quote shows he the clash of his moral universe when he says that he should have let the boy go but he didn’t and now he was going to help. The fact that he actually helped the boy instead of himself shows that his moral universe is guided by  kindness, compassion, and thoughtfulness of others.

One more theme topic that is clearly shows throughout the book and is probably shown throughout every holocaust novel and memoir is dehumanization. This theme topic is present throughout the book and whenever it is shown it is horrifying and gruesome. One clear example of dehumanization is the third quarter is just how the prisoners are being treated in the camps and how they are treated in the death march. In the  camps if you don’t work you die, if you try to escape you die, if you look at one of the guards wrong you die. The fact that this is who at every camp Yanek has been too is terrible. One quote that shows the deamination of Yanek and the prisoners is during the death march. During the death march the prisoners were forced to walk in the snow, most of them barefooted for the whole day until night. If any prisoner was too slow or moved to the back of the line they got shot. Thousands of people died during the march and nobody was saved at all. This chapter in the book clearly shows dehumanization because just like at each of the camps the prisoners are killed as if they are not people, but property. Dehumanization  morality are just some of the theme topics present throughout the book and but they are some of the best theme topics through the book

So I am halfway through the book now and it has started to get good. Yanek has been to three different concentration camps so far and he continues to survive. As I’ve been reading the book has showed me things about the holocaust that I didn’t know. It also made me feel extremely empathetic and sad towards the treatment of the Jews. Now when I read the book the only feeling present is immense sadness. The way they were treated was horrible and in this book specifically it really shows. The way Yanek and his fellow prisoners are treated is terrible. They are treated like an never ending resource that they can exploit. The mindset that they have is” if I kill a thousand of them, two thousand will take their place.” One quote in particular that really made me upset and feel especially empathetic was “And this man,” the commander said, pointing into the crowd. ”And this one, And him, And him. And him”. He was picking people at random now in his fury, punishing innocent people for the dead man’s effrontery”(page 111). When I read this quote it felt like my heart stopped. The fact that he was killing innocent people because one man tried to escape is horrendous. This specific quote opens up a window in my head that I had hoped would not be opened. I always new what happened during the holocaust but not in detail. I just knew that Jews were killed in large numbers but this quote showed me the worst part of the holocaust. The reason it did this was because it is so dark and gruesome that I have never had to comprehend anything like it before. The feelings that this book has opened up for me so far are just synonyms of the word sadness and depression. This text is unique however because you get to see the difference in concentration camps. Through the book Yanek goes to ten different concentration camps each one different than the last so it is interesting to see the difference in camps. Whether one is worse than the other or has a commander who is worse than the others. I am going to keep reading the book, hoping that Yanek survives.