Sarah's Key

Looking Back

Author's Note- 
This is my final essay for the book Sarah's by Tatiana  Rose.  On my first essay I wrote a quote I found on the front in my Author's Note.  And now to close my book I will write it again.-
Author's note- The review on the front of the book says;
"A shocking profoundly moving, and morally challenging story....  nothing short of miraculous. It will haunt you, it will complete you."
And it is all too true.
They say that the most important lessons in life are the ones you teach yourself. We as a country make mistakes, it is a way of life. You can look back on them with a shake of your head or you can learn to make it right. Each and every person must learn where they went wrong, which turn they made that they weren't supposed to. Because sometimes these turns aren't labeled "the path of evil and terror" and "the path of happiness and riches", but they are as unnamed as the solid dirt path underneath your feet. But this path has a name, it forever was and always will be, the path of life.

Now we don’t drive along in little neon cars winning the lottery and finding buried treasure, having twins and sending them away to summer camp. In Germany during WW2, there wasn't a certain path you could take, or maybe you could but it wouldn’t lead you anywhere. Someone was always there not as much guiding you, as forcing you in the directions they chose. You were pulled and twisted, tugged and pried, fighting for your life. The author in this book tells you that sometimes you might feel like you have nowhere to go, that you are a slave in the hands of another, but you are never without a hope and a purpose. So act, act on what is right, go with your better judgment. If you're better judgment tells you that it would be better to slowly be tortured to death than be free, honestly, I don’t know about you.

The other night I asked my mom why can't the like thousands of Jews have an uprising or anything? Why do they just sit there and do nothing? Do they actually think that doing nothing will save their lives? She used this long hefty answer just to say a single word. They were afraid. Though have you ever seen a child actually truly afraid? Not about something like a bee in their room but a true fear for their life? Never. I've never seen a child scared like that. But these people weren't children. Of course they were by definition but these kids weren't children. Their short-lived innocence was stripped from them like an id. They were expected to be adults. They couldn't cry or sob, they couldn't miss or fear. The main character in this story is one of these children. Hard as a rock. No happiness, no love. She was dead inside, and she was almost on the outside too. Her playing board was cut in half, and the only thing she was racing towards was death. Though she would trade anything to be there.

We made a mistake and we cannot go back and change it. It has changed the way the world works. For better or worse we will never know but back then it must have seemed like the second. Another path was set out for us. There is now the path of repentance as well as the path to more violence and pain. Which will you take? Someday you may have to make that choice, and despite how it sounds, this might be a very hard decision to make. Follow your heart but never forget the past and where each path you chose to take will lead you.










Prejudice
Prejudice is an ongoing issue that, although not as noticeable as it was in past years, is still around. Never will a disabled person be able to get down a street without attracting at least a few stares. Never will a different person have as many friends as others, never will they be treated the same. Today the most common prejudices we find are usually against the disabled and those with different religions. About sixty years ago the most common type of judging was for the Jewish belief which led to the beginning of world war two.

A young Jewish girl goes to the park to play on the playground with all the other children. The yellow star upon her chest made her proud and brave, but the other children didn’t seem to think so. Their eyes seemed glued to her six sided death trap as she walked up to her other friends she was supposed to meet there. The girls were over in the corner, talking, they waved her over and they spend the afternoon chattering. All of the girls friends were Jews because nobody else even wanted to be, as their looks of disgust as she walked by made that all too clear. Those children were taught to hate the Jewish religion and all of the type, taught to hate their best friends if they happened to bear a star, taught to be a bunch of jelly brained robots, being the person they never thought they could be.

I feel bad, not only for the Jews at that time, but also the children who were forced to give up their best friends and closest relatives because somebody threatened them. I would hate my parents if they made me do that, but only later would I realized that they were being forced to. Segregation was also an issue brought up by prejudice, but that was only a small issue compared to the all-world-consuming holocaust which lasted about twelve years and brought the whole world under. Even though I hate the holocaust and all the deaths it caused, I wouldn’t go back to change it if I could because it taught us an important lesson, that even the worst of events can have a silver lining, even if you can’t seem to find it.

 Imagine....
Author's note- A setting means where a story takes place to most people, but to me it means more. It means how the people are feeling about where they are as well as the actions of the people because of their feelings.  I never can limit a setting to just a place because I couldn't write a paper about a place.  What is there to write other than like, "It was dirty" or "There was a weird looking goat at the fair".  To me it is more like how a real place really is, like, "I squelched the gooey sand in between my toes and it felt cool land relaxing" or "I screamed at the sight of the thing, it was green yellow and red!" To me the setting is a close second in my list of what things are the most important things to have in an essay (after the characters having actual feelings) and if the setting is not explained well enough, it is just a place, not a time.

Without real feelings or actions, a setting is just a place.  But with the dedication of the author and the imaginations of the reader it becomes a whole lot more. I always like to see myself as the main character in a story and go through life as someone else.  It is fun to escape your real life for a while and become someone else.  So I ask that you try to picture yourself as a Jew trapped at Awswitch, living on hardly rations of food and horribly unsanitary  conditions.  Travel back over 60 years to relive the horrors of the past.  They can never be forgotten.

Throughout her entire life the girl had heard about poverty and about how lucky she was to be living in a house with a mother, father and little brother.  She had never been especially rich or popular, but this was terrible.  The cots were ancient, ripped from seam to seam, some had even had little clumps of dried leaves, their filling, popping out.  She laid down and stared at the ceiling, which was dipping in many places.  She saw some leaks in it which formed large puddles of some gross liquid that looked nothing at all like rainwater and most likely wasn't.  She heard a whistle outside and rose up along with all the rest of the children in her room and lined up by age at the door.  Pain shot up her leg and she screamed. It was a mouse trap, attached to her bare foot.  She knelt down and tried to pry it off.  The girl knew that if the officer came by and saw that she wasn't standing like all the rest of the kids there would be punishment.  After the hunk of metal let up it's grip she stood up and reached into her pocket feeling for the key.  It was the key that was going to ruin her life.  It was Sarah's key. 

This is how I imagine the setting of the Jewish concentration camp of  Awswitch being.  The stench unbearable.  The dirt floor muddy from all the leaks in the ceiling.  The nightmares you can never forget.  I really wonder how they could put people through that, and terrorize them for nothing at all. I can't imagine what was going through the prisoner's minds there.  Even though it was a sad and sickening part to read it is necessary to include it because otherwise there wouldn't be a point to the story.  The whole book is about that scene and if they didn't have it in there then the entire book would fall apart.  Also if there was any less vile conditions then   it wouldn't be as heartfelt a story.  You can't make every story a happy ending for fear that people might not like it, but you have to tell the truth, no matter how  sad and painful it is.











  

  Trapped

Authors note- I'm reading a book called Sarah's key that took place in 1942.  The Jewish Holocaust was going on, which in case you didn't already know, was a huge  Jewish massacre that took place in the 1940's mostly.  It was run by a man Named Adolf Hitler who is still the worlds most famous dictator from Germany.  For more information please go to http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001286.html
      The Jewish religion has, for ages, never be truly been accepted.  There has never been a Martin Luther King to stand up for them and tell the world that there is nothing wrong with the Jewish belief.  Also, because of that, people are still prejudice against them and want to forgive and forget the whole event that happened in the 1940.  What happened in those terrible years is something so horrible nobody could ever totally ever forget, the Jewish Holocast.
       It started in Germany when the world most famous dictator, Adolf Hitler, decided to take over the world.  He got innocent people from all over the world to work for him where they obeyed his every command and got whatever he wanted. His work spread all across the globe but my book specifically happened in Italy during 1942.  The first few chapters take place at a young girls house, but things take a huge turn for the worst after that when the French officers come and take them away. They spend the next few days in a kind of jail except there are over a thousand Jews in there and also there is no food or drink at all.  The weak ones die in a matter of maybe 12 hours, either by suicide or hunger.  The strong are then brought onto a train(a rail car((used to transfer animals))) where they are ship of to who knows where.  The only things that these people know for sure are that a. they stink and b. they are all going to die.
      England during those horrible years of the Jewish Holocaust lost over  6 million Jewish lives, 9 to 10 million others(gypsies, the disabled, and slaves), and also killed over 5 million foreigners. You can never forgive and forget this but be forever in debt to these who laid down their lives to keep their religion alive.












 Be Brave
       Author's note- The review on the front of the book says;"A shocking profoundly moving, and morally challenging story....  nothing short of miraculous. It will haunt you, it will complete you."
And it is all too true.

       Imagine being woken in the middle of the night by an obnoxious pounding at the door.  "Police, open up!" is what they shout.  You don't know why they are there but you know that it isn't to help.  You quickly stuff your brother in a closet and swiftly lock him in, promising you'll be back soon to get him, and run out to see what they want. The men are French officers and they tell you to pack a small bag of your things and come with them.  You grab as much as you can then return to the door where the men are standing.  "I'll be back tonight to get you," you had told your brother when you were leaving, and unknown to you, you won't be back tonight, or ever.

      Sarah is a young Jewish girl living in France during the time of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis'.  The French police had agreed to round up the Jews by night and send them to the concentration camps by day.  The Jews were widely disrespected and even a young girl of ten would have a great deal of trouble making it through a single school day without being spat upon or smirked at.  This is a true event called The great Round-up of the Velodrome d'Hiver where the French Government stole over a thousand Jews from their houses overnight and locked them in a huge room with no food or drink whatsoever , where, it is said, nobody ever returned. 

       It really makes me wonder how much these people are willing to stand up for.  The people in the building knew they would be captured sooner or later yet they brought up their children up in the Jewish belief and weren't afraid to how it to the world.  Honestly I would have never been able to do that and put my child's life in danger just so I could show I was a certain religion. In fact, I can't see how anyone could.  I really wish that, even though I look up to these people in their amazing bravery, people didn't have to do this.  I wish people could just understand that you don’t always need things that don’t belong to you like, say, other people's life?!

     This was a major event in history, not to mention a lesson well  learned.  I wish I could go back in time and change the course of history, but sadly that is impossible and, well, I wouldn't want to mess-up the wonderful life we all have today because of it.












 The True Meaning of Hope

 Author's note- If you wish to read this book called Sarah's Key then I warn you not to read this essay.  It ruins the ending.  Also I warn you it is pretty depressing and, in a way, painful to read.  The reason why I titled this piece The True Meaning of Hope is because Sarah, the young girl, never loses hope and sometimes that can be hard, to convince yourself that everything is alright. It is necessary that the girl has hope or else she might have just given up and died like all the rest of the Jews.  Instead she lived to tell her tale of life, death, and the true meaning of hope.


  "But daddy, Michael is still at home!" These are Sarah's last words before she is shoved onto a train and shipped off to certain death.  It had been one or two days since she had locked her brother in a closet promising to be back soon, and only then did she realize she wasn't coming back.  Her father snapped his head around to look at her. "What!" he whispered so the officers wouldn't hear him.  He sighed.  "There's nothing we can do," he continued, "we will just have to pray."  And pray they did.

  

          The girl was getting stronger.  She could lie at quickest of moments.  She could steal and beg and sprint faster than she ever thought possible.  She built an indestructible emotional bubble around herself so nobody else could hurt her.  When she ran from the camp she left all feelings behind, love was never the same, tears never dripped down her face again. Her face was melded into a constant frown.  Laughter and happiness were lost when she tore off that yellow star that cost her family their lives and buried it  deep in the ground of the past. Yet she prayed. She begged and pleaded, she would do anything to have her brother with her. 

         She missed her mother and father, but she knew they were dead.  She missed her friends, she knew she would never see them again. She missed everyone, everything she lost.  Most of all she missed her brother, and as much time as she spent praying she knew she had lost him too.

        After Sarah escaped she got on a train to Paris, her hometown, and dashed to the apartment.  She barged in the front door and what she saw was terrifying.  Another family had moved in.  There was a young boy about her age and a father.  She ran right through to her old room with the family right behind. She fumbled in her pocket for the key.  She prayed one last time and pushed the key into the lock.  As soon as she opened the door she knew she had lost.  The stench was almost unbearable and the black shadow curled up in the corner needed no explanation. She fell to her knees and sobbed.

       I almost couldn't finish this book, it was too much.  Every time this girl said her brother was still alive I felt worse and worse.  They say to tell yourself the worst so you can be ready if it comes.  Sarah needed the hope while she had it and I wonder how she could possibly even live knowing what she had done to her brother.  Turns out that 40 years later she realized just that and drove right into a tree where she went to live with her brother from then on.  All her prayers had been answered, but just a little late.