WWII Texts

This past week, we were assigned to read three texts over the WWII era and the Holocaust. "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" is a poem written by a child out of a series of collections from Volavoka. "The Shawl," by Cynthia Ozick is a short story that is about one mother's struggle to keep her child alive. Lastly, "Ladies and Gentlemen, To the Gas Chamber" by Taduesz Borowski is a story from a worker's point of view.

In Ozick's "The Shawl," the shawl is considered a magical shawl because it is the only source of nourishment Rosa's baby, Magda receives. Rosa is the main character in the story along with a girl named Stella and baby Magda. The story takes place during WWII and they are Jews at a concentration camp, under Nazi rule. They are trying to survive day in and day out, however due to the treatment they are under their bodies have become weak and Rosa can no longer breast feed Magda. Magda is constantly wrapped up in a shawl by Rosa and is constantly sucking on it like it is milk and it gives her a sense of contempt. Ironically, the shawl has a scent of cinnamon and almonds.

I think the most signifcant way to celebrate the human life and the strength of humans in Ozick's story is highlighted at the end when Rosa is reacting to Magda's death. "She only stood, because if she ran they would shoot, and if she let the wolf’s screech ascending now through the ladder of her skeleton break out, they would shoot; so she took Magda’s shawl and filled her mouth with it, stuffed it in, until she was swallowing up, the wolf’s screech and tasting the cinnamon and almond depth of Magda’s saliva; and Rosa drank Magda’s shawl until it dried." I think by Rosa drinking Magda's shawl until it died was her way of celebrating Magda's life and as much as she wanted to run to the electric fence where Magda was thrown, she held herself back because she knew if she did, she would die. I think that represents her strength.

In "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," the imagery and the symbolism of the yellow butterfly described is so significant because it was something so simple, a part of nature that most people got to see everyday. However, when you are in a concentration camp, you lose sense of the simple, beautiful things in life because they are no longer there.

"The last, the very last,

So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow."

 I think the fact that the poems were written by the young children of the Holocaust is heartbreaking and makes the reading more somber to read, knowing that these children's lives were stolen from them.