PRESENTATION OUTLINE
By: John burrows
Class 5th period.
3-27-14
The book I read for English class was about a young girl whos family and everyone she loved was taken away and killed by the Nazis. Through out the book she witnesses the atrocities that the nazis forced upon the Jews. Such as putting them in concentration camps, taking away their homes and lives, killing and starving them.
Setting: the book takes place at multiple concentration camps, but all are dark and grim. Food is scarce and so is water. None of the prisoners are aloud to have anything that reminds them of their former lives. The book is set in Northern Europe.
Characters: Sonia.
Throughout the book Sonia has to watch as her fellow human beings are slaughtered like pigs at the hands of the 3rd reich.
Sonia experienced being imprisoned in 5 separate concentration camps through out the book. The nazis moved her and the other Jews to different camps because the allies were closing in. Sonia had to experience the holocaust as a young girl. But miraculously she survived better then some around her. Most of Sonia's friends in the holocaust parishes along with others.
But Sonia eventually was saved along with other Jews and her sister Blanca by American soldiers. After a while she and her sister came to the United States, where she later cofounded the Holocaust Center Boston North, in Peabody, and joined Elie Wiesel as the second death camp survivor named to the council advising the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
Character description: Sonia is small, has brown hair, charming, and caring. She becomes very bewildered whenever someone she cares
Age: 13-17 as the book went on
Sonia's father, Janek Schreiber, owned a small shop for leather goods. He was a very kind man who cared very much for his two daughters. He died in a concentration camp when a guard beat him to death with a chair. But before he was taken away Sonia, she was able to dance with her father for the first time in her life.
Character description: Sonia's father is very leveling and caring towards his wife and children. He does his best to protect them from the nazis who try to harm them. He never gave up hope that one day they will return home.
Sonia's mother, Adela Finder Schreiber, kept house. Adela was a very sweet and caring mother. Before she was taken away from Sonia, Adela told her to promise her that she would tell of the atrocities that fell upon them to the rest of the world.
Adela died from an illness at the camp she was sent to about a year after she was taken away.
Character description: Sonia's mother was a very loving parent. Sonia depended on her the most in the beginning of the book until She was taken away from Sonia.
The Angel of Death. The angel would come every month or so to inspect the prisoners. If any prisoner was slightly ill the angel of death of death would give the prisoner a shot that would kill them. The angel of death is a nazi doctor who would experiment of some of the prisoner to see what happened. Some doctors like Joseph mengele would see the bodies of two children together. He would also saw off the limbs of living children to see how they would react.
Sonia's sister, Blanca,
Her sister was around the age of 20 when they were taken away to the camps. She was married to a man named Norbert. Blanca made sure that Sonia kept going through the holocaust. She wouldn't let her sister perish like the others around them.
The nazi guards: The nazi guards in this novel and the actual holocaust were very brutal and merciless. They showed no sympathy to those they were slaughtering. They were the disciples of satan himself.
Sonia's poem
A night… A storm… Our blood still warm, Soaking into the snow. Our bodies recoil Upon frozen soil, Oblivious to the flow Of pain, that whips. Our lifeless lips
Belie this final hell.
At the break of dawn
We barely moan
A silent: “Sh’mah -- Israel”
Sonia's poem: I still can hear
The words you spoke:
"You tell the world, my child."
I promised I would
Tell the world ... But where to find the words
To speak of
Innocence and love, And tell how much it hurts ...
About those faces
Weak and pale, Those dizzy eyes around, Six million lips
That whispered "help" But never made a sound ...
Sonia's poem: “I danced with you that one time only
How sad you were, how tired, lonely. You knew that they would take you soon, So when your bunkmate played the tune. You whispered, ‘little one, let us dance, we may not have another chance. To grasp this moment, sense the mood, Your arms around me felt so good, The ugly barracks disappeared, There was no hunger, and no fear. Oh, what a sight, just you and I, My lovely father once big and strong And me, a child, condemned to die, I thought how long before this song must end. There are no tools to measure love And only fools would fail to scale your victory.
Events in book: in the beginning Sonia and her family had a decent life they lived in a nice apartment in Poland. But around when Sonia was only 13, she and her family were forced to live in a Jewish ghetto.
Sonia and her family had to live in the ghetto for about a year, food was scarce, not very much water to drink or clean or bathe. during this time Sonia resorted to poems to keep her spirits up. one night the nazis raided the ghetto and started taking certain people away. Sonia's mother was one of them.
Soon after Sonia's mothers abscense, the rest of the family were put in cattle cars and taken to a Nazi concentration camp, there the men and the woman of the family were separated.
Through out most of the book Sonia and her sister Blanca just try to survive as they watch as their fellow human beings are turned into martyrs who never asked to be crucified to the demons in which the nazis worship
At one point in the book Sonia witnesses a hanging of a Russian boy and an elderly man. The boy was hanged because he was singing a Russian nursery rhyme from his childhood, it's never said why the elderly man is being hanged.
The old man slits his wrist to try to kill himself but the nazi guards force him to stand and hang. After the hanging the nazis force the other Jews to March around the gallows while the nazis drink alcohol and sing.
At another point
She watches as the nazis take the head Jews of the camp to a hill and slaughter them with their weapons. Afterwards the nazis dump their corpses in a ditch and burn their bodies.
Through out the book Sonia is moved to about 5 different concentration camps because the Americans are getting closer and closer to the father land of hate, Germany.
But around the end of the book, the Jews at the camp that Sonia is at discover that all the nazi guards are gone. Soon after the Americans arrive and help the broken and battered Jewish prisoners.
Sonia's sister is reunited with her husband and Sonia discovers that her father was killed. After Sonia recovers from the flu she, her sister, and her sister's husband move to America to live out the rest of their lives.
In America, they try to live out the rest of their lives in peace. As Sonia got older she met a doctor who eventually became her husband.
In Sonia's older years, has helped start a few foundations dedicated to those affected by the holocaust and by the atrocities the 3rd Reich committed.
A poem by me about the holocaust: "god forbid you see the sign"
The angel of death spreads it's wings and casts a shadow on those below.
They never saw it coming. One by one each woman, man, and child was picked to be sacrificed to the angel of death's master.
Shot, gassed, and burned.
The whole world watched as a tyrant tormented and slaughtered an entire race like they were vermin, The whole world turned their backs on the new martyrs.
The angel of death exposed it's fangs and sunk them into the necks of the broken, to drain them of their would.
The burning flesh will linger in the air for all to sense.
The wretched angel of death flies through the skies with its black and ragged wings, hunting for the weak.
Those who survived the camps of hell will forever carry the stench of death with them.
They will never forget the beast known to them as the angel of death.
The angel will forever stalk them from the skies with fear and pain.
Review of book: I think that I promised I would tell is a amazing yet sorrow filled. The book expresses it's own pain and misery through words that don't do it justice, yet it still gets the message out. The book teaches us how a single group of fascists were for some reason aloud to attempt to erase a entire race. But they thankfully failed. I give this book 4.5 stars.
