Book Thief Themes: Hiding Jews During the Second World War

An article on Oskar Schindler: An Unlikely Hero

Oskar Schindler was an ethnic German man living in Czechoslovakia who joined the Nazi party in 1939. During the Polish invasion, he moved to Krakow and took control of two formerly owned Jewish factories.  Ghettos in Krakow provided cheap labor for his factories and as a result, Oskar Schindler made a fortune.

In 1942 and 1943, Nazis invaded the ghettos in Krakow killing many Jews and the ones who survived were taken to a force labor camp. In 1944, Schindler and his workforce set up a fake labor camp and negotiated with Nazi officers to move Jewish workers into his factory. What they did not know was that Oskar Schindler was working to protect the Jews workers while each of them was put on “Schindler’s List”.

To read full article on Oskar Schindler, click here

Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler's factory

 Some Interesting Facts

• An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 non-Jewish Germans hid Jews during the Second World War according to Johannes Tuchel, head of German Resistance Memorial Centre. 
• The Silent Heroes Memorial project is a museum that honours and tells the stories of people who helped hide and protect Jews during World War 2. 
•  The 1993 movie "Schindler's List" is based on Oskar Schindler and the efforts he made to save lives during the Holocaust.
• Click here to read about 10 people who saved Jews during World War Two.

                          The 1993 movie based on the real story of "Schindler's List".


Quote From The Book


In Nazi Germany, hiding Jews was forbidden. Anyone found hiding Jews, assisting in hiding, or helping Jews in any way was taken away to concentration camps planned never to be seen again. In The Book Thief, the business of hiding a Jew is explained as:

"Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day." (Zusak,211)

This quote is significant because it illustrates how people who were hiding Jews had to pretend they were not hiding Jews. They had to pretend nothing was wrong, that everything was perfect. The reality of the case was that the initial shock and constant worry of having this threat; a stinging reminder that you were hiding a Jewish person was always present.


Double Trauma for Hidden Children – Gordon Haber

In 1939, around 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi Germany but by the end of the war, only 100 000- 500 000 of them survived.  These children had many ways of survival; some were hidden in attics or basements of German homes, and others were in the open, hiding their true identity (Jewish) and pretending to be Christian with their new families.  Some children were sheltered from their heritage since infantry and did not even know they were Jewish.

Some of the Jewish children who survived through being hidden had a hard time going back to the way they used to be, Jewish.  Even those who had parents or family who survived the hardships of Concentration Camps were reluctant to go back to a life that posed them danger, and many had become accustomed to their new Christian life.  Due to this, many custody battles between biological parents and the Germans who hid the children broke out.  Other children however, were relieved to have their family back.

To read full article, click here


 

This picture is the Annex that Anne Frank hid in.  The bookcase on the left of the picture was the secret door and this was above an office building.  If any noise was made during the day, the people below would hear them so they had to make sure that no noise was made whatsoever.

Anne Frank Movie 2009

Thematic Comparison: The Sniper vs. Full Metal Jacket

War shows no boundaries in both the short story The Sniper by Liam O’Flaherty  and the film Full

Metal Jacket directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Both demonstrate war reduces the value of  human beings to mere targets. This is evident in The Sniper when the main character is positioned in his hiding place. A woman informs an enemy solider where he is and “the sniper raised his rifle and fired...” and as the women flees to escape, the sniper fires at her and “the woman whirled around and fell with a shriek to the gutter”. The sniper fired his rifle with intent to kill without any hesitation. Even though the woman was defenceless and not armed, he chose to kill her. Her gender, appearance and reaction of desperation did not affect his decision at any point. This event in the story shows that the sniper saw her as a target to shoot and not as human being.  Another example of how the value of human beings is reduced to targets is shown in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. When Joker and Rafterman are on their way in the helicopter, they ride along side another soldier. The soldier appears to be amusing himself greatly as he uses his machine gun to shoot at people collecting rice. He laughs and turns to Rafterman and Joker and exclaims “Ain’t war hell?” and continues to shoot. This is a very clear example as to how war reduces the value of human beings because this man saw these people collecting rice like characters in a video game. He was shooting at them to entertain himself. In both the movie and the story, the soldiers saw human beings as targets and nothing more.

Both the movie and the story depict that what the protagonist(s) envisioned the enemy to be did not match with who they encounter in the end. The sniper feels a sense of accomplishment when he hits the enemy sniper who was shooting at him. He was curious to discover the identity of the sniper he had just killed so he “turned over the dead body and looked into the face of his brother”. The ending of this story leaves the reader to speculate if this was his related brother or figurative brother; however in both contexts it clearly shows that the sniper did not expect the enemy he killed to be his brother. This moment shows that individual soldiers are not the enemy and that the only thing that makes them the enemy is the side they are fighting for. In the film, a hidden sniper taunts two soldiers slowly with painful hits they die. The rest of the group make their way into the building the sniper is shooting from. In a dramatic sequence of events, it is discovered that the skillful sniper is a young teenage girl. The look of shock and disbelief is obvious on every soldier as they look into the vulnerable young face of the girl who is fatally wounded on the floor begging them to shoot her.  The enemy was unexpected for these soldiers because perhaps they expected that kind of accurate precision and merciless behaviour from a cruel faced and intimidating soldier. Instead the feared and cruel enemy was a young civilian girl. In both examples, it leads to the question of who the enemy is during war and what makes them the enemy. 

By: Andrea