Meredith Boles

Professor Wertz-Orbaugh
UWRT 1102-005
November 2, 2015

Peer Response Draft

In the process of creating a Research Review, one of the steps is

to complete a Peer Response Draft. In this draft, I will be dialoging with
a source that really spoke to me. This source, among many will be
included in my Final Draft. My inquiry is focused on what childhood is
like when youre a son/daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Most of my
sources are very emotional and personal because this topic is very
private and special for each child.
My first quote is, My parents often had nightmares. Either she
cried and woke my father up or else he started screaming and woke
her. In the middle of the night he screams: Germans! My father was a
very passive man and he never did anything with us children (Epstein,
115). I find this quote very important because it simply shows how
effective this childs parents dreams were on her. They happened
frequently enough for her to recognize a pattern, in which would wake
her every time. This really connects to my inquiry work in a way that it

is a very personal quote from a child that is actually living with the
horror that her parents are experiencing.
Another point that I think about when reading this quote is how
similar it is to my other quotes. They all seem to be very personal,
however, with my topic it would be very difficult to find a quote that
wouldnt be personal. I am focused on how it individually affects each
child so being emotional is necessary. This quote also made me wonder
if the parents arent the only ones that have nightmares. Do the
children ever have reoccurring nightmares? I hope to answer this
question as I continue researching about these emotional struggling
families.
My second quote is very powerful. It reads, How could people go
through an experience like that and not expect it to have a residual
effect on their children? I kept thinking it had to be brought out in the
open and that we had to do it ourselves. I kept thinking it was time for
Elie Wiesel to move over. That there was another generation coming up
behind him. I wanted to find and talk to those people (Epstein, 336).
This is obviously a quote from a very irritated parent. They seem to be
frustrated due to the fact that people dont understand the effects
unless youve experienced the fear they once did. This person seems
to be very bold and eager to take action following Elie Wiesel. Like my
previous quote, this one is also very personal to the individual. It shows
how stressful it can be as the parent of a child that is constantly

reminded of the past. Even though my inquiry question is focused

solely on the children, I still think it is important to get the parents
perspective to be able to overall understand the situation. Having
various perspectives on this topic will strengthen my paper overall as
well as thoroughly answering my inquiry question.