One Survivor Remembers: Gerda Weissman

1. What scenes or images were the most powerful for you, and why? What lessons or messages did these scenes offer?

I felt that the images of Gerda's family were the most moving. Many people would think that the scenes with many bodies of people or people suffering would be the most moving because of the things that those kinds of images they made you think of. I think that the pictures of her family were the most moving because they are depicting her family members that she was forcibly separated from. To think that she never saw her family again is really sad and is one of the worst parts of the Holocaust: the separating of loved ones and family.

2. How did the Nazis dehumanize Jews? How did Gerda Weissman work to overcome dehumanization, and who helped her?

The Nazis dehumanized all Jews by making them work with no pay, starve while they enjoyed comforts and luxuries, shaved off all their hair, gave them numbers instead of names, and at the beginning of a camp, they made Jews walk naked to and from different buildings. In Gerda Weissman's story, it doesn't say too many things on how they dehumanized her. I'm guessing it was just implied but what they did tell us for fact was that they made her work for long hours and also made her starve. Gerda Weissman overcomes these dehumanization tactics by living her life. She carries on and that is what helps her overcome these adversities. She is practically saying that no matter what they do to her, she is still human and will act normaly. Her friends that she makes along the way help her with this because having friends is part of a normal life.

3. During her ordeal in the Nazi camps, Weissmann says she fantasized about enjoying a simple morning with her family or deciding what dress to wear to an imagined party. What simple things in your own life do you think you'd fantasize about if everything were taken away? What ordinary things do you think you take for granted?

If I lived through the Holocaust like Gerda and everything was taken away from me, I would fantasize about one thing: a giant Thanksgiving feast. If I had no food and no water, that would sound amazing. You never really think about the food you are eating on Thanksgiving because you think, "It's Thanksgiving, eating like this is mandatory." But if everything were taken away, you would have nothing to eat on the day of thank. Another thing that I would miss a lot and the thing that I take for granted is my bed. It is very warm and comfortable and I sleep in it every night. It is where a person prepares for the following day. Without a good night's sleep, you are useless the next day. Its funny how things have very little value until none of it is for you.

4. This film focuses on the persecution of Jews in the Holocaust, but others also murdered, including Soviet POWs, Roma (Gypsies), gays and lesbians, and Communists. In what ways do you see persecution happening in today's world? What groups do you see being targeted? What can be done to work against such prejudice and intolerance?

In today's world, people that are persecuted are not killed like in the Holocaust, but it is not much better. Many people in today's world persecute gays to be "dirty" or not right in nature. Many other groups such as Blacks, Hispanics, mentally disabled, and communists are persecuted in racial and stereotypical ways. People say that African American and Hispanic people are bad news and always getting into trouble which is not true at all. These kinds of rumors and stereotypes are today's form of the Holocaust, but of course not nearly as bad.

5. In many ways, this film is about hope for the future. Who are the heroes of the film? What did they do that makes you hopeful? What can you do to help make the world a better place?

The hero of the film is obviously Gerda because she is the one whose whole family was taken away yet she still survived year after year of sadness and fear. Although she is the hero of the film, and her survival and her story makes everyone know that people can get through bad times, I think that the people who made me most hopeful were the people who voted for Gerda to win the Oscar. It shows that people really do care about what happened and are mortified that we almost let it happen if America hadn't acted quick enough. The people who voted gave her the Oscar not because of her great story telling, but to show her that the world is a better place, to show her that we do care, and to show her that we, the American people, will never let anything that horrible happen again.

If I Should Die Before I Wake Blog 3

In If I Should Die Before I Wake it never says where they are specifically. It doesn't say what exact time period that it is. It doesn't even say the importance of this family. It is just another unheard family's story of the Holocaust. My main character’s name is Chana and she and her family are forced to live in a ghetto. Her father is publicly executed, her grandfather dies from undernourishment, and the whole family has lost hope. Even her little sister, who could not be more than 9 years old is digging through trash heaps of human waste to find enough food for her family. The death toll is slowly rising in this Nazi ghetto. More Jews die every day from starvation and disease, and some even commit suicide. You may ask, "Why did they allow themselves to be captured? Why did they just stay at home when they knew what was happening to Jews all over Europe?" The problem is that they didn't know. Nobody ever knew what happened to their neighbors who just suddenly vanished off the face of the earth. People simply decided that they had moved without saying so. It is quite astounding, though, how the Nazis kept the secret for so long. Word must have gotten out somehow. But no, Chana's family never sees the free light of day again, or gets word out otherwise.

Although this story is fiction, many children like Chana were living in the Lodz ghetto. Some Holocaust survivors spoke to the National Holocaust Memorial Museum on some of the horrors that actually happened to those people only 50 years ago. One person said that the majority of deaths occurred when people tried to run, not to get free, but just so the soldiers killed them. It’s really unbelievable to think that people would actually want others to kill them. That is how bad the Holocaust was in real life, not just in books.

The Holocaust is nothing like the stuff in books that you read about. The survivors’ stories are their own primary sources. The grandfathers of our generation were only children back then and didn’t know what was going on and only 10 maybe 20 years later did they understand. One woman even remembers asking her friend in the ghetto, “Why are we being separated from all the other people when we do not look nor think differently from anybody else.”

If I Should Die Before I Wake Blog 2

In school we are reading a book called Night by Ellie Wiesel. It is a memoir on Ellie's life as he experiences the Holocaust. We have only read a little bit so far but from which we have read, I can determine that Ellie is strong, loving, caring, courageous, and a little naive. Yet at the same time, I am still reading If I Should Die Before I Wake and the protagonist, Chana, is very similar to him, not physically, but mentally.

Ellie and Chana both share the same motivation. Ellie and Chana both love their families very much, as any person would. They are both Jews during the Holocaust and they are trying to survive along with their families. This is what motivates them to do things that they normally wouldn't. They both do not want to suffer or die but with their families. Despite this motivation, both of them eventually lose their fathers. And even though they are so motivated to survive, many other conflicts arise during the stories

The Holocaust drives people to do insane things that they would probably not do before. This drives Ellie and Chana to question their own religions. They think that if they are being killed because they are Jewish, then why can they not just switch religions and not tell anyone that they were Jewish in the first place. They are suffering from internal conflict caused by this and other things as well. They do not want to suffer but what can they do? They are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are forced into labor but cannot do anything about it because then they die. They do not know what to do and only continuing reading will reveal what they do about it.

If I Should Die Before I Wake Blog 1

I am reading the book called If I should die before I wake. It is about a girl named Hilary who is in a Hitler supporter group. She has a boyfriend named Brad and she goes for a ride on his motorcycle one rainy night. The next things she knows she is in a hospital bed in god knows where and being tended to by a Jewish nurse who she despises. Yet she finds that she cannot move and that she cannot even talk and she does not know why. She is very angry and confused when all of a sudden; she starts to spin away into unconsciousness. She becomes a Jewish girl named Chana living in a small community and witnesses firsthand the horrible things that the Jews went through during the Holocaust. She is confused and does not know where to turn. At one moment she is talking to a Jewish nurse who she hates, and then she is a Jewish girl experiencing their hardships, and then straight back to having to hate the Jews. She does not know what is happening and what to do.

There are many characters in the story so far. There is of course Hilary/Chana. Then there is Hilary's mother and Chana's mother and briefly her father. There is the Jewish nurse and some German soldiers. Hilary's story mainly takes place in a hospital bed but Chana lives out her life as a Jew in a small community. I have not read much of the book yet but I can tell that it will be good and the Hilary will discover the evils of the Holocaust by the end of it.