blog #6

1. What scenes were most powerful to you and why?
For me the most powerful images were the video clips in the beginning of the video. They showed women being dug up. You could barely tell they were women. I found the photos at the end of the video when they found the girls in the bicycle factory. The girls were all bone, you could barely see the life in their eyes. When Gerda went to get her Oscar, I thought her speech was really moving and powerful.
2. How did the Nazis dehumanize Jews?
From the documentary, they made the Jews feel like they were worthless. In the pictures I saw, the women were starves. A way the Nazis could dehumanize them would have been to not give them proper food. If I was them then I would start to feel like I was being treated like a poorly treated animal.

3. If I was put in her situation I think I would try to think about anything. When I was thinking about this before I started to wonder what my life was like while I was in Guatemala. I think I would try to build a story from what I have heard from my parents. I think i probably take a lot of things for granted but the sad thing is I don’t think I would really appreciate them until they are all gone. I could try but I do not think it would be the same.

4. In the holocaust Jews were not the only ones being targeted. Today, people of a different race, sexual orientation, or people with disabilities are still targeted to prejudice views. In my own family there is some prejudice. My grandfather can be a little bit racist but that was how he thought when he was a kid. My father can be well not racist but sometimes stereotypical. People who are gay are often made fun of. There are kids who have committed suicide because they were bullied about being gay. Today a lot of “minorities” are still being discriminated. My mom said that Hitler would have hated our family because my mother is disabled, I am not white and both my parents are fully Jewish. My family Is proud of that and I hope that things will change in the future.

blog #6

1. What scenes were most powerful to you and why?
For me the most powerful images were the video clips in the beginning of the video. They showed women being dug up. You could barely tell they were women. I found the photos at the end of the video when they found the girls in the bicycle factory. The girls were all bone, you could barely see the life in their eyes. When Gerda went to get her Oscar, I thought her speech was really moving and powerful.
2. How did the Nazis dehumanize Jews?
From the documentary, they made the Jews feel like they were worthless. In the pictures I saw, the women were starves. A way the Nazis could dehumanize them would have been to not give them proper food. If I was them then I would start to feel like I was being treated like a poorly treated animal.

3. If I was put in her situation I think I would try to think about anything. When I was thinking about this before I started to wonder what my life was like while I was in Guatemala. I think I would try to build a story from what I have heard from my parents. I think i probably take a lot of things for granted but the sad thing is I don’t think I would really appreciate them until they are all gone. I could try but I do not think it would be the same.

4. In the holocaust Jews were not the only ones being targeted. Today, people of a different race, sexual orientation, or people with disabilities are still targeted to prejudice views. In my own family there is some prejudice. My grandfather can be a little bit racist but that was how he thought when he was a kid. My father can be well not racist but sometimes stereotypical. People who are gay are often made fun of. There are kids who have committed suicide because they were bullied about being gay. Today a lot of “minorities” are still being discriminated. My mom said that Hitler would have hated our family because my mother is disabled, I am not white and both my parents are fully Jewish. My family Is proud of that and I hope that things will change in the future.

Blog #5

Blog #5
My book is a different view of the Annex where Anne frank lived in. I haven’t read the diary of Anne frank but I want to. I wonder how Annexed is different from her diary. In Annexed Anne has such a lively personality. I wonder if that was true. Anne Frank apparently loved to write. I want to know if she exaggerated things in her diary.


I know that Anne Frank is famous for her Diary but I wonder if there are any other diaries that are less famous. I remember hearing about one but I can’t remember who it was by and when I tried to look up Holocaust diaries Anne frank came up Instead. I hope to read her diary and maybe another Diary from the Holocaust and learn about the experiences of these people.

blog #4

#4
Annexed is very different to me then the boy in the striped pajamas. In the boy and the striped pajamas it was from a boy’s point of view and the father of the boy is a Nazi. In annexed it is from a Jewish persons view and he is a little bit older. I think that Peter is very brave even though he might not think so. Bruno I thought was brave. He snuck into the camp to play with his friend, but I also thought that was just the mind of a little boy.


I like Annexed better than the boy in the striped pajamas. I can’t put my finger on why I like it better I just do. I was thinking that I liked It more because I was Jewish and it was from a Jewish persons view but I wasn’t sure. Maybe The Boy In the Stripped pajamas was just not my type of book.

Blog #3

Blog #3
Today I started reading a book called Annexed. This book is about the boy who fell in love with Anne frank. In the beginning of the book peter, the main character was going to say goodbye to his girlfriend, Liese. When he arrives at her house he hears the Nazis break in. he hides so they don’t find him. While he is just sitting there he hears them take Liese and her family. Peter is mad at himself. He wanted to fight and rescue his girlfriend. He regrets his decision to stay hidden and he feels like a coward.

When he arrives at the annex he doesn’t like the franks. He thinks that Anne is very annoying. From reading this book I think Anne is annoying to. She always tries to get in your business and she never really stops talking. To me that’s annoying and I understand why peter doesn’t like her at first.

blog #2

Blog 2:
While I am reading this book I am wondering what the father does for a living. I am starting to think he works for the government. I am not sure if the father is a Nazi, but it could be a possibility. In the end of the book the boy takes the place of the Jewish boy and ends up getting killed instead. This was a really sad ending and it shows how strong a friendship can be. I thought it was sad how the boy’s fathers men were ordered to kill what they thought were all Jews.

I thought this book would be a bit harder to read. For me it was kind of an easy book to read even though the topic was very brutal. I believe some people in my book club felt the same way. Over all I really liked the book. Reading the book makes me want to see the movie and see how similar or how different they are.

blog #1

Blog 1: In the beginning of the book there is a boy. He lives in Berlin Germany. In the first chapter the mother tells him he has to move from his big house in berlin. When the boy is confused he asks his mother why they have to move. His mother says it is because of his father’s job. In the book we don’t really know what his father does. The text says that the father has a study and never lets anybody into it. From what I can tell in the book, the father seems like a man who has a very busy job and is not very close with his kids. I am not sure if this is true yet but when I read more I will see.
The boy has a sister. They don’t talk about the sister a lot. He just says that she is a hopeless case. When you have an older sister you tend to think they are weird so maybe that is what he is referring to. The other thing I was thinking of was that his sister has a disability. In this time in Germany, people who were disabled were outcasts. In the Holocaust people who were disabled were prosecuted just like the Jews but probably more of them were killed. If this was the case then the family would probably want to keep their daughter hidden.
When the boy gets to his new house, he finds that it is very different from the house he lives in now. It is not as big and there are no houses next door. The boy is very upset that he moved. He wanted to stay close to his friends. I think the boy is very young. He acts like a little child who doesn’t understand “grown up” things.

The other day my father was watching a show about ten modern people trying to live ten days like the cavemen. The show was an experiment to see if modern people could live life cavemen. By the middle of the show two people had already left the experiment. This showed that some modern people wouldn’t be cut out to live life like they did. There was one part of the show that I found interesting. It was when the people in the experiment were trying to make tools to go hunting. They said even though the tools were simple, it didn’t mean that they were easy to make. It took a couple of hour to make useable tools to hunt an animal. After watching this show I started to think that I could do it.

Flower Garden By Shirley Jackson

I read a short story called flower garden by Shirley Jackson. This story was about the friendship of two women, Mrs. Winning and Mrs. McLane. Mrs. McLane just moved from New York to a little cottage in the country. Mrs. Winning lived in the same part of town as Mrs. McLane but grew up there her whole life. The little cottage that Mrs. McLane moved into was great for a garden. After a few weeks Mrs. McLane and Mrs. Winning were becoming close friends. The people of the town were very nice to Mrs. McLane and always offered their help. Until one day Mrs. McLane hired a person of color to help her in the garden. After this happened no on in the neighborhood would talk to her and they wouldn’t include her five-year-old son Davey in parties and other Childs events.

In the beginning of the story the protagonist, Mrs. Winning seemed to me like a very old fashion women. The story says, “ and sometimes when they were washing dishes or shelling peas or polishing silverware together, their hands moving so quickly and similarly, communicated more easily and sympathetically then their mouth never could.” All the things that were listed in these quotes made me think that my grandmother would have done those things and my mother wouldn’t. It seemed to me that that was all she ever really did she didn’t have a life of her own.

In the middle of the story when Mrs. McLane hired a person of color to work in her garden, Mrs. Winning tried to tell her that it was a bad thing. In that time, I am guessing it was a couple decades ago, having black people work for you was a bad thing and unexpected in society.

One of the essays I found interesting was William Zinnser’s “simplicity.” I found this interesting because I know a lot of people who try to use more complicated words to either sound smarter or more mature. In his essay he says, “ Our national tendency is to inflate and therefore sound more important.” This means that a lot of people talk in a way that is more complicated and harder for people to understand.

When it comes to writing Zinnser says, “clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other.” Zinnser believes that when people speak more complicated then they have to, their writing will be more complicated and harder to understand. Another thing that Zinnser says is, “the secret to good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.” He is saying that by having a huge story with complicated words, will get your message cross just as easy if you used simple words.

Simplicity means a lot of different things to other people. Zinnser’s version of simplicity can be a good thing to think about when you’re writing. Zinnser’s version of simplicity is a lot like my own. I think of simplicity is not making things harder for you. By using simple words you can make your life simpler.

This I believe

By Isabel Oppenheimer

When I started second grade, my mother already had ALS for a long time. I knew why she was sick and that she couldn’t do stuff that other moms could do. In the Middle of second grade my mom started to get sicker and she had to go to the hospital in Doylestown. In a couple of months she had to move to a new hospital in Philadelphia. When my mother got there she told me and my father that she didn’t really like the nurses all that much and that they weren’t very kind. My mother stayed there for a bit and I would visit her every couple of days. My mother still didn’t like the hospital very much but she got by.

One night after one of the nurses left from checking on my mother, the nurse forgot to give my mother the call bell. During this time my father was home and was tired. He was trying to decide whether or not to call the hospital and check on my mom. Back at the hospital my mother started to have trouble breathing in a few short seconds she couldn’t breathe at all. My mom was kicking her legs, trying to do anything to get the nurses attention. Back at home my father decides to call the hospital. When the nurse answers she tells him she will go and see if my mom wants to talk to my father. When she goes in she realizes that my mom can’t breathe and calls a code blue.

I wasn’t told that story right away but I knew that my mom could have died while she was in the hospital. When I was told that story a couple of years later I knew that miracles could not only happen to other people but that they could happen to me. I guess my belief is more then just miracles. I believe to have faith