Your second post's due date has been altered. This post will be due by midnight 11/04/10.
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o Reflection, connection, response, summary, etc. – your choice
• Titled: Last Name-Book Title-Pages read
o Kitzmiller-Night-1-26
Vlazny- I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree- 137
ReplyDeleteIn my book, Hannelore is first separated from her family and her first camp when a foreign Commandant noticed her and insisted she be relocated. She is moved to a strange type of camp, where Jews work and have normal jobs and houses. The only difference is that there is a barbed wire fence around the community. She is treated nicely for the first time, and even has milk, nice clothes, and a sofa to sleep on. But then a Nazi who has been talking to her offers her freedom if she comes with him to get a passport. She agrees, expecting to be able to escape. Instead he leads her back into his apartment where he beats her for information about the Commandant. Before he can kill her he is called away for duty, and she is taken to a quite different camp where she doesn't have enough food, the work is impossible, and there is a lot of violence toward the Jews on a regular basis.
Chapters 1-4
ReplyDeleteHistory, it has been said, is the propaganda of the victors...
I think that this is very true and many people do not realize this. This definitely comes into play with genocides of all sorts. Take for example the Soviet Union during WWII. The Nazi's were charged with crimes against humanity after the war. Many people do not know though that the Russians were almost as bad. For example of the 90,000 prisoners captured by the Russians after the battle of Stalingrad, only 5,000 ever made it back to Germany. Because the Russians won the war, they were never put on trial even though the deaths were cause by poor care which is against the Geneva Convention which states that all POW's must be taken care of in at pretty good condition. I find this statement to be very true in all senses of the statement. In the book I am reading, Nero: Reality and Legend, this comes into play with the Roman Empire. The Romans claimed that all campaigns were in self-defense and to protect Rome. But take Briton for example, the natives who were pretty much barbarians and could have never attacked Rome for so many reasons and yet the Romans still attacked them claiming that they were defending their borders. Once again, the victors created propaganda to create support for their cause and justification for what they did. Although I am not too far in my second book I can see how much of history is a lie and how who we know were the most terrible criminals are portrayed that way because the victors wanted it to be which could be the case of Nero as history is written was a corrupt and poor ruler.
Rehman-The Story of Blima-118
ReplyDeleteIn my book Blima got to the concentration camp and found people that she knew back from school. At the camp she was asked if she could sew and automatically she said yes even though she could not. When the lady in charge found out she could not sew she just went up to her and fixed her shirt so she would be able to sew it properly. Later on that lady took Blima under her wing and told Blima that she would be her mother since Blima no longer had a real mother. Then the Nazis were evacuating the camp and Blima was sent to a holding place where she found her sister-in-law that she is now with. At the holding camp all of the people just stay inside, but since there is more diseases there the people do not get fed very much. Then the British came and liberated all of the people. Everyone got new clothes and more food, but the people stayed in the camps until they were well enough to leave. Many families were reuniting just like Blima's were she got her one older brother and her younger brother back, but no one else in her family. The book is very good and keeps your interest going because of all of the events now unfolding. It was sad in some parts because of Blima realizing her fate so far, but she is still happy to have some family left. In the end of the book I think that Blima will go and try to find the lady that told her she would be her mother and also that Blima will stay with her family that she now has left.
Shipley-Darfur Diaries-100
ReplyDeleteIn my book the people creating the refugee documentary have began to start interviewing the refugees. Many of the children in the refugee camp are all smiles and happy to interact with the new people in the beginning, but as soon as the film crew asked about what happened to their families, they got really quiet. I feel sorry for these kids that have lost everything, but still have to walk around and live their life as if it never took place. I could never imagine life without my family or just losing all that I ever had.
Another main focus of my book was the rebuilding of schools in Sudan. The kids at the refugee camps are in overcrowded classrooms with a shortage of teachers and supplies. Reading this section really made me appreciate the education and resources I get at Central. I plan to donate money or supplies to try to help some of these refugees. I hope that in the near future the quality of life will improve for the Sudanese.
St. Pierre-Alive In The Killing Fields-55-97
ReplyDeleteIn my book the Cambodian people are just starting to escape the Khmer Rouge concentration camps. Many Cambodians have been caught trying to escape resulting in death. Being smart, the Khmer Rouge devised a plan by setting up land mines trying to blow up any escaping prisoners. This worked sometimes but the word got out and it no longer worked. MOP and his family have been traveling for days; mostly in circles with hardly any food or water. These resources were very limited and were also needed to survive. After many days of wandering MOP and his family made it to Battambang where they were safe as the Vietnamese took over the city. Here they could finally rest and not worry about death. This book has been very interesting and I can't wait to further pursue it.
Sawyer-The World Must Know-75-95
ReplyDeleteIn this section of my book it focuses on the different ghettos during The Holocaust. It explains the invasions of the ghettos and how life was after the invasions for the people who lived there. Another major topic in this section was the the children who lived in the ghettos. Life for them was deffinantly not easy. They had to march through one of the ghettos, Theresienstadt, right after a war had taken place. Therefore they had to see all the remains from the tragedy. Everything in the lives of these kids was altered, including schools. Sometimes schools would shut down which lead to clandestine classes.
Villier-We are Witnesses-39-79
ReplyDeleteIn this section of my book we glance into the short life of Yitzhak Rudashevski. His diary accounts mostly focus on the movements to the ghettos and how hard life was in the ghettos. He exlains the concept of the yellow certificates and how they gave the families with them safety from the killing of the germans. A depressing part of this section is when Yitzhak looses one of his best friends. One day he is there and the next day he is gone along with 5,000 others. This was sad when i put it in perspective because i pictured how confused, hurt, and lost I would be if my best friend suddenly dissapeared.
Wagner- No Pretty Pictures a child of war- 47-74
ReplyDeleteIn this section of my book Anita and her brother had sneaked into the ghetto until Niania could find them a good enough home. While in the ghetto, they heard rumors that there was going to be a Nazi raid. So a man that their uncle knew took them and her mother into an attic of a house where about 20 others were hiding in the same spot for the same reason; they were all there without the Nazis knowing. So after the raid, Niania had found shelter for the three of them and they just walked out of the ghetto without the Naziz noticing. Their new shelter was a nun convent. Niania had Anita fake an eye injury with a cloth over her eye to get in. While they were there, they met a girl named Krysia and her mom. Krysia has a disease called turberculoses. One day Krysia wanted to go to t he carnival to ride to -go-round but she has an attack there which lasted over a half hour. She couldn't stop coughing. When she finally did, she headed straight home and never said a word to anyone. She got straight in bed and went to sleep. The next morning she would not wake up. She was dead, with her eyes opened. The nuns hold a funniral for her. This is where i'm at in my book.
Winstel-The rape of Nanking- 35-85
ReplyDeleteIn this section of the book it talks alot about how people were killed and gave aan inside look about people that surveved the masacure. In one instance a man wanted to see wht has happened so he leaves his safe spot and gets trapped along with other in this killing sport. Eventually we falls into a ditch where he facked his death and was burried by many other dead people. on top of that he was bayoneted five times to make sure he was dead and he could not make a sound or they would know he was alive. I am shocked that he is alive and don't think I could hve done that. The Japnese hve won and I dont think that there is any chance for the Chinesse to fight back.I could barely read about the different ways that the Chinese were kiled I don't know how people could do such things.
Rose -Seasons of Blood-72-172 (What can I say, it's a good book.)
ReplyDeleteSince my last post, I've read a lot. The book, as mentioned before, is in the eyes of a group of BBC documenters who went to capture footage of the genocide as it happened. These men have had to leave orphans to fend for themselves due to the fact that their vans couldn't hold all of the children. They've seen towns that were once buzzing with people turned into a town with little to no inhabitants. Not to mention one of the men who was documenting fought in the war that was ravaging the Rwandan nation, so going to places he'd much rather forget was very hard on him.
Smith-Trail Of Tears-29-54
ReplyDeleteSince my last post, I haven't read a whole lot(not the most exciting book ever) But, right now my book is focusing mainly on small battles inbetween the different native american tribes. Right not, it is talking about the early 1800s, about 25 years before the moving of the native americans actually started. The author decided to break it down and focus on the native american's point of veiw then move onto the settlers mindframe. This section has been discussing leaders of tribes, and also promises that the U.S Congress made to the Natives, but were never actually kept.
As Stalin continued up the ladder of success in Communism he became more and more ruthless. His party finally gets the power it has wanted and has kicked out the previously existing party. Then, soon after this his friend and mentor, Lenin, dies. He has to beat out a few people but otherwise it was an easy win for Stalin, he becomes head of the Bolshevik party. The first thing he does is kick out, and by kicking out i mean exiling or even killing, those not loyal to him and replacing them with people of his own choosing. These men would be the first of many to feel the wrath of Stalin and the Russian "War Machine" or "Iron Curtain" that followed him
ReplyDeleteReeser-The Rwanda Genocide-24-50
ReplyDeleteThere are different views on how the genocide began but what I'm starting to realize is that the genocide did not begin only for political reason but rather because of other countries intervening. The two groups definitely had ethnic issues and the Hutus felt that they were at a disadvantage because they didn't get the same education and treatment as the Tutsis did. The reason behind the unfair treatments are because of other countries getting involved with the Rwanda politics. Tutsis believed that other countries brainwashed the Hutus to wipe out the Tutsi population. This was an absurd accusation however it was believable. At the time the divide was getting greater and greater and people were getting to the point where they wanted to believe anything that would give them a reason to kill one another. In my book they relate the Hutu extremist to Hitler. They say that the Hutus went on a massive killing trying to recreate the holocaust. It is all a matter of opinion on what you believe. I however feel that neither group was correct in trying to get revenge on one another. All of the causes no matter if it was taken to the extreme or if it actually happened, it led to the "final solution."
Perry - Survival in Auchwitz - 24-38
ReplyDeletePrimo Levi's mood has changed from the start of the book up untill this point. He was a little more optimistic from the start of the book, but now he is thinking more and more that he will most likely die here. Everyone that he was captured with were having meetings every Sunday, but since numbers from the group are dwindling every day, and the faces and bodies from that group are becoming so thin and destroyed, they cancled the meetings because they were just to painful, and took the little bit of optimistic side of them away. He also talked more about the block houses they are staying in and the groups, along with some of the specific block houses for specific cases such as skin diseases.
Yarrish - Life in a Nazi Concentration Camp - 31-60
ReplyDeleteDuring this section of the book, one of the most important things that stood out to me was what the Jews and other minorities had to go through every day in concentration camps - roll call. This may sound like an easy-going part of their daily lives, but it could get quite brutal. Roll call was sometimes as early as 3 in the morning; and sometimes lasted hours and hours. Everyone had to be accounted for. In some situations, a person would die without being noticed and when their name was called at roll call and they were not there, the whole group was punished for it. The prisoners were forced to stand for hours, sometimes in incredible heat and sometimes in incredible cold. It was a very violent and brutal time for all of them.
KSmith-Genocide:Systematic killing of people-32-63
ReplyDeleteIn this section of the book, I read about many tragic events that occured throughout the mid 1900's. One even was the Holocaust, and I could relate it to the book "Night" that our class read. It had very similar information with the killing process of Jews and how they were treated. I learned that there was a group of Nazis called the Einsatzgruppen, and they would go around capturing killing Jews. They would round them up in every village, make them strip naked, march to a ditch, and shoot them. If there was no ditch they made the Jews build one. In Auschwitz, about 6,000 Jews were killed in gas chambers every day. By 1938 Jewish people were banned from any type of German life, including government, civil service, journalism, radio, teaching, theater films, stock exchanges, medicine, and law. Even while Germany was in the war and everyone was against them, the killing continued. It shows the hatred that Adolf Hitler had towards Jews, and that's why he treated them the way he did.
Shue- Killing the White Man’s Indian- 35~86
ReplyDeleteThis section spoke mainly of the Lumbee Indians and their struggle to define themselves and fight against their extinction like so many other tribes failed to do. They first hid from recognition when Americans were dispelling other well known tribes, like the Cherokee. Once the Trail of Tears had passed, they fought to become a recognized tribe and against the racism against blacks at the time. Their only problem with becoming a distinguished tribe was their lack of Indian culture, being almost too civilized. Despite their feelings that blood was all that made them Indian, Americans based it on their history and background of Indian language and such. Their lineage was the test, one they weren’t very prepared for, not having any solid proof other than what flowed in their veins, and even for some that wasn’t much. However, just a trace was enough for themselves.
Patel-Rwanda-24~37
ReplyDeleteThis section was basically about what caused the genocide in Rwanda and how the Hutus treated the Tutsis during the genocide itself. It was really said because Rwanda used to be over populated and after 1994(the year the genocide happened)there were only 5 million people left. This section also talked about how the Hutu president mysteriously died in a plane crash. The Hutus blamed it on the Tutsi and they owed to kill every Tutsi. The Hutus even killed other Hutus if they were affiliated with a Tutsi. The Hutu would dispose of the bodies in fields so no one could see the dead people. Rwanda started a really poor country and after this genocide they had a lot of trouble trying to recover from the loss of people and money. In the end, things still were never the same.
My response to the pages I read is why would anybody want to do this? Why would people want to kill other civilians or your native country? The main reason the genocide began was when President Habyarimana's plane was allegedly shot down by Tutsis. Since Habyarimana was a Hutu, other Hutus felt the need to kill all of the defenseless Tutsis. Before all of this happened, their country was already poor and in need of money and with the genocide happening, the country just grew even weaker. I know that I would never kill anybody else no matter what the circumstances were.
ReplyDeleteSydney Adams
ReplyDeleteAdams, First They Killed My Father, pgs. 78-128
In my reading, Loung Ung, just witnessed her father's dealth. Also many tennage girls have been disapering. Loung now says every night before she goes to bed, "I will kil them all." Even though all of Loung's sibilings have been murdered,except for her little sister, she still keeps her head high hoping the Youn soldiers will set her free.
Starr-Genocide:The Systematic Killing of a people- 31-61
ReplyDeleteThis section that I read about for this post were about some of the other genocides that have happened around the world. These genocides ranged from the Armenian Genocide to the Holocaust. A lot of the genocides that I've read about are very similar to the Cambodian genocide. The genocides all included being moved from their current homes to a different place. The people were then put to work as slave laborers or killed right away. Hitler was very racist, killing tons of Jews freely. Many of the Jews were moved in to concentration camps, being put to work as slaves. The Nazis formed a special execution group, specially made just to kill Jews. This job was very difficult to perform by the Nazi group, so many committed suicide or went mad. This was taking too long, so Hitler changed plans to the concentration camps. In the end, around 65 to 70 percent of all the European Jews were killed of the Holocaust incident. I could easily relate to this genocide because of the book we read earlier in the year called "Night," by Elie Wiesel. That book made it easier for me to understand more about the Holocaust genocide. The Cambodian genocide also relates to this because a lot of the victims of the genocide were forced to work or else shot and killed. This book is teaching me all of the different things our world has had to overcome and face.
Sheckells- I Have Lived a Thousnad Years- 63 to 110
ReplyDeleteIn this part many bad things have happened. The girl had gotten sent to Auchwitz and she did not have a good time there. She was shoved into a cart with over one hundred people. Her first meal was a green thick uknown stew that has a mixture of glass, ants, worms, and cloth. Personally, I think that is really gross.She thought that she could not eat it, but she had to have a way to have a chance to survive. Another thing is that one night her mom was laying down and these women were jumping on the wooden bed overtop her mother and it crashed and fell. The women did not care that she got paralized because they continued to jump. She got taken into the emergency room, and the daughter kept coming back because she found a secret way to talk to her and everyday the mom could move a new body part. I really think that it was a miracle.
Reinhard- The Rape of Nanking- 35-140
ReplyDeleteThe book I'm reading is called “The Rape of Nanking” by Iris Chang. The section second was pages 35-140. This section was not as exciting as the first one. It talked mostly about the military aspect of the Rape of Nanking and a lot of the events leading up to it. It talked about how the soldiers were trained to be so brutal and kill without feeling. There was a certain part in this section that I really enjoyed. This was when a real Japanese soldier retold what happened when he was beginning his training. He said that at first, he saw all of his fellow soldiers as evil because they could kill without hesitation or a sign of regret or remorse. I think this was probably how I would feel, because when you try something for the first time and everyone else seems like they know what they’re doing, you may see them as extremely brave or hardworking while you are just a beginner. But, as the soldier went on in his training and the officers helped him learn how to behead a prisoner, it became easy for the soldier and he no longer saw his peers as evil. This amazed me because I didn’t think it was easy to grow used to killing, but I guess it is because this solider had. Also, this section of the book was not very interesting to me because I do not really enjoy learning about war and the military. This section talked about having an air force and how it was important in battle. It also talked about how many soldiers were kidnapped to join the military and many were also underage. (As young as 12) Overall, I was not as entertained with this section then the first, but I am enjoying the book this far.