Unit 2 - remembering and reflecting on the holocaust

Read the excerpt from Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea. We arrived at the station, where the cattle cars were waiting. Ever since my book Night I have pursued those nocturnal trains that crossed the devastated continent. Their shadow haunts my writing. They symbolize solitude, distress, and the relentless march of Jewish multitudes toward agony and death. I freeze every time I hear a train whistle. Read the text and study the image from Spiegelman's Maus. Which is an accurate statement about the excerpt and panel?

A. both support the fact that millions of innocent jews were rounded up and taken by traint to camps.

Read the excerpt from Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea. To this day I am shaken when I see a child, for behind him I glimpse other children. Starving, terrified, drained, they march without a backward glance toward truth and death—which are perhaps the same. Uncomplaining, unprotesting, asking no one's pity, it is as if they have had enough of living on a planet so cruel, so vile and so filled with hate that their very innocence has brought their death. Read the text and study the images from Spiegelman's Maus. Which best describes why Wiesel and Spiegelman include Jewish children in their works?

A. both texts points out the innocence and naivete of the children during the holocaust.

What does Art Spiegelman's choice in portraying the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats in Maus reveal about his point of view?

A. he sees the jews as the innocent prey and the nazis as the cunning predators

Read the excerpt from Elie Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea. I didn't understand, though I wanted to. Ask any survivor and you will hear the same thing: above all, we tried to understand. Why all these deaths? What was the point of this death factory? How to account for the demented mind that devised this black hole of history called Birkenau? Perhaps there was nothing to understand. Based on the excerpt, the author would most likely agree that

A. the rationale for the holocaust will always be incomprehensible

Read the excerpt from Elie Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea. Why were those trains allowed to roll unhindered into Poland? Why were the tracks leading to Birkenau never bombed? I have put these questions to American presidents and generals and to high-ranking Soviet officers. Since Moscow and Washington knew what the killers were doing in the death camps, why was nothing done at least to slow down their "production"? That not a single Allied military aircraft ever tried to destroy the rail lines converging on Auschwitz remains an outrageous enigma to me. Birkenau was "processing" ten thousand Jews a day. Stopping a single convoy for a single night—or even for just a few hours—would have prolonged so many lives. Based on the paragraph, the author would most likely agree that

B. People need to be proactive when they witness an injustice

Which best describes Elie Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea?

C. a deeply personal account of a true event

Read the excerpt from Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea. In this universe some men existed only to kill and others only to die. And the system functioned with exemplary efficiency: tormenters tormented and crushed their prey, torturers tortured human beings whom they met for the first time, slaughterers slaughtered their victims without so much as a glance, flames rose to heaven and nothing ever jammed the mechanism. It was as if it all unfolded according to a plan decreed from the beginning of time. Read the text and study the images from Spiegelman's Maus. Which is an accurate statement about the excerpt and panel?

C. both pieces depict the treatment the jewish people endured during the brutal nazi campaign.

Read the text and study the image from Art Spiegelman's Maus. What message is Spiegelman trying to convey in the panel?

D. by being presentable and appearing able-bodied, the individuals still had hope they could escape a terrible fate

Read the excerpt from Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea. My very last resistance broken, I let myself be pulled, pushed, and kicked, like a deaf and mute sleepwalker. I could see everything, grasp it and register it, but only later would I try to put in order all the sensations and all the memories. How stunned I was, for example, to discover another time outside time, a universe parallel to this one, a creation within Creation, with its own laws, customs structures, and language. Read the text and study the image from Spiegelman's Maus. Which theme is addressed in both excerpts

Reality can be inexplicably cruel and unfair.

Which best describes Art Spiegelman's work Maus?

a nonfiction graphic novel that depicts the horrors of the Holocaust

Elie Wiesel most likely wrote All Rivers Run to the Sea to

attempt to make sense of the atrocities he experienced.

Both Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea and Spiegelman's Maus relate events of the Holocaust

from a Jewish survivor's perspective

Read the text and study the image from Art Spiegelman's Maus. The author most likely includes the panel to

hint at the strong bonds among his family member

Elie Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea is a

memoir

Read the excerpt from Elie Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea. My very last resistance broken, I let myself be pulled, pushed, and kicked, like a deaf and mute sleepwalker. Read the text and study the image from Art Spiegelman's Maus. The theme best expressed by both Wiesel and Spiegelman is

submissive obedience

Read the excerpt from Rena Kornreich Gelissen's Rena's Promise: Two Sisters in Auschwitz. "I have a favor to ask of you, Andrzej . . . This is very difficult for me, but I must ask. It is no longer safe in Tylicz for Rena. Her mother and I are worried for her safety every day." Read the text and study the image from Art Spiegelman's Maus. The theme best expressed in both excerpts is

threatening uncentarty