We have read 138 pages of Milkweed, our literary circles book. I have chosen five paragraphs or phrases that I found interesting in the last 15 chapters of the book.
1. 'They were Jews. I knew by the armbands they wore. Every Jew had to wear a white armband with a blue star. This was a big help in telling who was a Jew...'
I found this quote on Page 69, Paragraph 2. I found it very depressing that the Jews have to even wear armbands displaying their 'inferior' place in society and that just by looking at them you judge them without even knowing their personality. It's like nowadays how we tend to judge people based on their looks but at a much more terrifying scale. (They're identity is judged on first looks.)
2. 'Why don't you wear your armband?'
'Why don't you?'
'I'm not a Jew.'
'Well I'm just a little girl. Who cares about a little girl? Besides, we live in the ghetto now. We're safe.
I found this quote on page 82, paragraph 4. I found it really sad and terrible because Janina thinks that the ghetto ( a place where all Jewish people in her community were forced to move to, so basically a prison ) is a safe and comfortable place for her and her family. Whereas, little does she know, the main aim of the Nazis is to imprison the Jewish in the ghetto and torture them.
3. 'What do oranges taste like?'
'Like nothing else.'
'What do they look like?'
'Like a little sun before it sets.'
I found this quote on page 88, paragraph 2. I find that it really portrays how little the boys have been able to experience and how unfortunate they are that they find oranges a luxury and even something surreal. This shows how rough their pasts have been, even though they are still very young.
4. She had become skinny and gray. She no longer worked at the uniform factory. She tilted to one side. Her hair was like a mop. She looked like rag dolls I'd seen Dr. Korczak's orphan girls carry. She coughed, and the force of the cough toppled her over.
I found this quote on page 107, paragraph 2. I thought it was a really good passage that describes the affect of the Nazis and their terrible treatment towards Jews. The woman in the context is Janina's mother and has obviously been terribly changed due to the happenings. (Something that points this out is how it mentions that she no longer worked at the uniform factory and therefore something stopped her; in this case the antisemitism surrounding her.)
5. 'Flops' were all over the place. The Jackboots hired them to guard the Jews in the ghetto. The crazy thing is, the Flops were Jews too. Jews guarding Jews? It made no sense to me.
I chose this quote (page 102, paragraph 4) because I found it extremely strange that the guards the Nazis chose to guard the Jews in the ghetto were actually Jews themselves. Whether this was because they had bribed them, because they were higher up in some ranking or because they wanted to see their own race suffer, I am unsure.
Overall, I am still really enjoying this book and gaining a lot of knowledge on the second world war. It's especially interesting to read the book from a naive boy's perspective at this time.
1. 'They were Jews. I knew by the armbands they wore. Every Jew had to wear a white armband with a blue star. This was a big help in telling who was a Jew...'
I found this quote on Page 69, Paragraph 2. I found it very depressing that the Jews have to even wear armbands displaying their 'inferior' place in society and that just by looking at them you judge them without even knowing their personality. It's like nowadays how we tend to judge people based on their looks but at a much more terrifying scale. (They're identity is judged on first looks.)
2. 'Why don't you wear your armband?'
'Why don't you?'
'I'm not a Jew.'
'Well I'm just a little girl. Who cares about a little girl? Besides, we live in the ghetto now. We're safe.
I found this quote on page 82, paragraph 4. I found it really sad and terrible because Janina thinks that the ghetto ( a place where all Jewish people in her community were forced to move to, so basically a prison ) is a safe and comfortable place for her and her family. Whereas, little does she know, the main aim of the Nazis is to imprison the Jewish in the ghetto and torture them.
3. 'What do oranges taste like?'
'Like nothing else.'
'What do they look like?'
'Like a little sun before it sets.'
I found this quote on page 88, paragraph 2. I find that it really portrays how little the boys have been able to experience and how unfortunate they are that they find oranges a luxury and even something surreal. This shows how rough their pasts have been, even though they are still very young.
4. She had become skinny and gray. She no longer worked at the uniform factory. She tilted to one side. Her hair was like a mop. She looked like rag dolls I'd seen Dr. Korczak's orphan girls carry. She coughed, and the force of the cough toppled her over.
I found this quote on page 107, paragraph 2. I thought it was a really good passage that describes the affect of the Nazis and their terrible treatment towards Jews. The woman in the context is Janina's mother and has obviously been terribly changed due to the happenings. (Something that points this out is how it mentions that she no longer worked at the uniform factory and therefore something stopped her; in this case the antisemitism surrounding her.)
5. 'Flops' were all over the place. The Jackboots hired them to guard the Jews in the ghetto. The crazy thing is, the Flops were Jews too. Jews guarding Jews? It made no sense to me.
I chose this quote (page 102, paragraph 4) because I found it extremely strange that the guards the Nazis chose to guard the Jews in the ghetto were actually Jews themselves. Whether this was because they had bribed them, because they were higher up in some ranking or because they wanted to see their own race suffer, I am unsure.
Overall, I am still really enjoying this book and gaining a lot of knowledge on the second world war. It's especially interesting to read the book from a naive boy's perspective at this time.
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