Singer, Isaac Bashevis.

"The Lecture"
Summary

narrator is a Yiddish writer, a Polish Jew who fled from the Nazi regime and
became a naturalized American citizen.
travels by train from New York to Montreal where he is to deliver an optimistic
lecture on the bright future of the Yiddish language.
watches the fellow travellers
how they are so carefree,as if they never heard about Hitler and Stalins murder
machine.
evening the train stops heating stops working: The American dream gradually
dissolves and harsh Polish reality returns.
The passengers start chatting with one another.
The narrator sits alone and does not talk to anyone
arrives to Montreal ,nobody is waiting for the narrator
There is an old crippled woman with her daughter who approach the narrator and
identify him as Mr N.
woman admires his writing
woman is a Polish Jew.
she offers to accommodate him for the night. He is freezing and cannot fall asleep
lost the manuscript of his lecture
Binele, the young woman, throws the door open and cries that her mother is
dead.
The old woman died of the strain of coming to the railway station to wait for the
narrator. Analysis
Polish life chases him,even tho hes american now
The woman and him are nameless both experienced nazi camps
Elie Wiesel- Night

narrated by Eliezer, a Jewish teenager who lives in his hometown of Sighet, in

Hungarian Transylvania.

studies the Torah and the Cabbala

his teacher, Moshe the Beadle, is deported. Moshe returns, telling a horrifying
tale: the Gestapo took charge of his train, led everyone into the woods, butchered
them.

Nobody believes Moshe

In 1944, the Nazis occupy Hungary.

they are herded onto cattle cars journey ensues.

the passengers arrive at Birkenau, the gateway to Auschwitz.

Eliezer and his father are separated from his mother and sisters, whom they
never see again.

march them from Birkenau to the main camp, Auschwitz.

arrive in Buna, a work camp, work in an electrical-fittings factory.

Eliezer himself begins to lose his humanity and his faith, both in God and in the
people around him.

Eliezer operation for a foot injury.

the Nazis decide to evacuate the camp

middle of a snowstorm, the prisoners begin a death march

At Gleiwitz, the prisoners are herded into cattle cars

twelve remain alive concentration camp Buchenwald.

In Buchenwald, Eliezers father dies of physical abuse. Eliezer survives

Themes : Family some left behind their slow family members during the deat
march,others killed their father for a scrap of bread inhumanity creates
inhumane people

Eliezer also feels his father as a threat to his own survival

Eliezer doesnt lose his faith,but he doesnt believe God to be just anymore

Jews deprived of their identity

Night= death,loss of faith,inhumanity

Bernard Malamud: The German refugee

The narrator, Martin Goldberg attempts to teach English to a German refugee,

Oskar Gassner, who is to give a lecture in English about American poet Walt
Whitmans relationship to certain German poets.
Oskars anguish and his failure to learn English
narrators failure to understand why.
narrator fails to realize is his students deep involvement with his former countrys
fate and that of his non-Jewish wife, whom he left there.
Oskar successfully delivers his speech
sense of pride at what he taught the refugee
Oskar commits suicide, the narrator never sees that he is partially responsible.
Oskar intelligent in German,helpless in English
Wife murdered by nazis
Cynthia Ozick: The Shawl

Rosa, her baby Magda, and her niece Stella

march to a Nazi Concentration camp in the middle of winter.

weak and starving.
Stella's knees "tumors on sticks." Rosa a "walking cradle" she carries Magda
Rosa contemplates handing Magda to the villagers
the guards would shoot them.
the shawl is "magic" it sustained Magda for three days and nights without food.
Stella observes Magda looks Aryan
Rosa continues to hide Magda
Stella takes Magda's shawl to warm herself.
begins screaming for her "Ma." Rosa hears the screaming, but does not run to
Magda because the guards will kill them both.
she runs to get the shawl and begins waving it in the hope that Magda will see it
and calm down.
watches as the Nazi guards pick Magda up and throw her into the electric fence,
killing her.
Rosa stuffs the shawl into her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

Flannery OConnor: The Displaced Person

takes place on a farm in Georgia, after World War II in the 1940s.

owner of the farm = Mrs. McIntyre, contacts a Catholic priest to find her a
"displaced person" to work as a farm hand.

finds a Polish refugee Mr. Guizac with his family

hes hardworking the Shortleys, a family of white farm hands, feel threatened
and try to manipulate Mrs. McIntyre into firing Guizac, but Mrs. McIntyre decides
to fire Shortley instead because of his unsatisfactory work.

When she finds out that Guizac has asked his teenage cousin to come to America
by marrying one of the African American farm hands, she is appalled, her
appreciation of him melts down.

A few weeks later Mr. Shortley comes back and says Mrs. Shortley died of a
stroke on the day that they left. Mrs. McIntyre rehires Mr. Shortley, but realizes it
was Mrs. Shortley she has been missing.

Mrs. McIntyre is intending to fire Mr. Guizac, but puts it off several times. When
she eventually goes to fire him, she becomes a silent participant in his murder,
when - with Mrs. McIntyre quietly observing - a bitter, resentful Mr. Shortley
positions a tractor to roll over Guizac's body as if by accident as he works
beneath another machine. The tractor finally does so, crushing and killing him.

Mrs. McIntyre's farmhands abandon her and, after she suffers a nervous collapse,
she is bedridden and receives no visitors save for the priest.

Analysis
The story was written while O'Connor was residing with her mother at a farm
called Andalusia. Scholars believe that the farm was the inspiration for the setting in
"The Displaced Person" and is the work most closely associated with Andalusia.
Flannery O'Connor was fascinated with peacocks, described in her essay "The King
of the Birds." In the story, the way the characters view the peacocks often
corresponds to their own moral compass. For example, Father Flynn and Astor have
positive attitudes towards the birds and are generally likable characters, while Mrs.
McIntyre starves the birds and reduces their population, making her a villain

Primo Levi: Survival in Auschwitz

Joins an anti-Fascist group captured by Fascists in 1943 detention camp in

Italy

Then Auschwitz

brutally hard labour

highly educated chemist

he survived the camp over the course of a long, horrific year, during which he
faced starvation, bone-numbing cold, and disease.

1945, Nazis abandoned camp ,Soviet army.

healthy prisoners were taken with them

Levi, scarlet fever

After ten days prisoners still alive were rescued by the Soviet army.

Levi wrote his memoir, originally titled Se questo un uomo (in English, If this is a
man), in 1946

he committed suicide in 1987.

About this, Elie Wiesel famously said: "Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years
later.

How to feel like a human being after dehumanised

stripping them of their possessions, hair, and names.

When we finish, everyone remains in his own corner and we do not dare lift our
eyes to look at one another. There is nowhere to look in a mirror, but our
appearance stands in front of us, reflected in a hundred livid faces, in a hundred
miserable and sordid puppets. We are transformed into the phantoms glimpsed
yesterday evening.

Rebecca Goldstein :The Legacy of Raizel Kaidish

Mom named Raizel after a girl who was killed in a camp

She volunteered to be killed instead of her friend
Someone reported on them
The dad doesnt like to talk about the holocaust while the mother never wants
to forget
She hates positivists raizel starts studying positivism
Mom pretends to be very moral she tells her daugther that she was the one
who reported Raizel
She expects her to fit the legacy of the girl