My Bridges of Hope (Pgs 1-49)

Summary:

In the first section of My Bridges of Hope, a biography about a fourteen year old surviving the harsh and horrific events in Auschwitz  for a year. Elli has gone through starvation, brutality and dehumanization. With the encouragement of her mother she has been able to return to her town. Things are not the same when her, her mother and brother have reached their once vivid home. They have to struggle trying to get through the days without a well furnished home, money and the little hope of living a successful life with out her father, who had died a couple of months ago.

Unlike other survivors her age Elli, makes a decision to go back to school, but during the war people have moved into Czechoslovakia and it effected the structure of how the school was before the holocaust. Elli tries to fit in but she is outcast because she speaks Slovak, and even when she finds a friend who she can relate to she is not accepted. She finds a place where she is accepted, Tattersall, which is a community of all thirty six survivors that have returned and made a community where they eat their meals with each other and talk about their deepest thought, as if they were all family. Being part of the Tattersall, Elli has become friends with Miki the secretary who told her about a secret organization that is smuggling Jewish people into Palestine because the British are trying to stop them entering, so that the riots will end. Elli brings this idea about moving to Palestine to her family, but they decide it would be better if the to go to American and live with their uncle in New York, like their father always dreamed of. 

Elli being only one of the few children going to school she has the ability to interpret from a soldier girl, who is hysterically insane, that after a couple of weeks she wants to marry Miki because she believes that even after the holocaust he is rich. Some how she gets pregnant-ed by him after inviting herself to live at his house, with out his approval, and they move to Palestine as a married couple.

Quote:

"Take the hat. Its my way of saying, forgive me. Forgive us, miss. For everything.... This is your father's coat, slecna. I am one of the nameless thousands who benefited from your loss" (Jackson 28).

Reaction:

When I started to read this biography, I began to remember different information that I had learned during the past years. While reading it lead me to start searching up more about  the holocaust and Hitler, and look at the different pictures. I seen a picture of Germans holding up their hands while Hitler was walking through a crowd of people (see below). To me it looked like there was not anyone who was against killing all the Jewish people, and did not feel sorry about what was going on, and that they fully agreed with Hitler.

Until I stumped upon this quote, it gave me a different perspective on how the Germans felt about the holocaust. It showed that they did notice what had happened, and even a random guy that Elli had never meet before, was able to say that he was sorry for what had happened. That the only thing he did was benefit from the death of her father and many other Jewish people. I think that this was one of the many strong and important quotes that is in this book, because it was very unexpected. From by background knowledge about the holocaust i would have thought the man would of kept on walking and mad it seemed like Elli was not there but instead he stopped and took his coat off and even his hat out of consideration and gave it to Elli. Just him giving her back the jacket was a very powerful moment during the novel, that it has changed my perspective towards the book, to be more opened minded about what i believe is going to occur.