The Holocaust Literature Reviews Samples For Students

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

The book The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (2006) tells the story of a nine-year old boy Bruno who comes from a very wealthy German family. He lived in a big and beautiful house in Berlin with his father who worked for the military; his mother who took care of their home; and his sister Gretel whom he considered a hopeless case.
He came home from school one day to learn that he and his family were moving to some place far away, which devastated him because it would mean that he would have to leave school, his three ...

- Introduction
Holocaust literature focuses on a multitude of different experiences, personalities, ethical choices, and behaviors-- both on the part of the victims and the perpetrators. Much of the literature that has been written on the subject focuses on the facts of the Holocaust; however, some of the literature focuses on the experiences of the victims and the aftermath that they experienced as a result of the Holocaust.
However, because this literature focuses on the same central event, it’s possible to identify many common themes that are woven into Holocaust-related short stories, poetry, drama, memoirs, and novels. In ...

Introduction

MAUS was published in 1992. The author, Art Spiegelman, is a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, tells his story. His son comes to terms with the story. Art got the whole idea of writing the book from his father. It has been acknowledged as the most successful and affecting narrative ever done about the holocaust. It is among the very first masterpiece in comic history. Maus is a haunting story within a story. It talks about survival by examining the relationship between the author and his aging father. Maus studies the very bloody paw prints of history and tracks its meaning ...

The Holocaust is a very dark moment in human history which is often told, presented and understood through literature and film. Through reading a re-telling of life during the Holocaust, readers are able to gain a better understanding of what it felt like to be living during this time. It is also possible to convey these same emotions through films that depict life during the Holocaust. Sarah’s Key is a fictitious emotional story that weaves together the past and present and allows the reader to gain an understanding of what life was like during the Holocaust. While the book version provides deeper ...

Historical Essay: The Diary of Anne Frank

As the title of the book suggests, Anne Frank’s diary is the published diary of the titular Jewish girl in the 1940s. It begins before the Holocaust hit the world on her thirteenth birthday in June 12, 1942 and abruptly ends two years later on fifteenth birthday after the capture of her family by the Nazis. The diary begins with descriptions of the experiences and thoughts of a Jewish girl on the brink of womanhood in an anti-Semite atmosphere. It then describes the life of the Franks in hiding after the Nazis reached their home in the Netherlands. The ...

In the poem “Snowy Egret” by Bruce Weigl, a man comforts his neighbor’s son, who has just killed an egret with a shotgun and is filled with regret. The poem itself is a wonderfully written piece that plays with the notions of childhood innocence, our culpability for our actions, self-deception, and more. The use of an egret for the bird that the boy kills is very apt, as it reminds the reader already of the word “regret”; it becomes a symbol for that regret the boy has in killing it and disobeying his father. The poem also plays with themes of death – ...

Sylvia Plath and Marge Piercy can be considered as two outstanding feminist American writers. Plath is famous as a poet, novelist and short story writer who married the famous poet, Ted Hughes. She is the commencer of the conventional poetry and has composed many poems during her life time. Piercy is the novelist and the social campaigner who can be regarded as a significant female voice. “Lady Lazarus” and “Barbie Doll” are the two exceptional poems written by Sylvia Plath and Marge Piercy respectively.
“Lady Lazarus”, taken from the collection of poems Ariel, is famously known as the Holocaust ...

In the Night written by the Elie Wiesel, the author describes his misery in the Holocaust. He uses the imagery to demonstrate the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the Nazi camp. These Jews were forced to survive deceitful conditions in the concentration camps. The incarcerated Jews were subjected to the most horrible forms of inhuman treatment. This made Jews lose their mentality and morality because they were pushed beyond their capability of dealing with oppressing brutality, starvation, exhaustion and diseases among others. The change of the character and morality can be attributed to the dehumanization that they experienced, ...