Nick Alexander

UWRT 1103
Wertz-Orbaugh
January 11th, 2016
Weekly Writing #2
While listening to Reva tell her story of going through the Holocaust I learned a
few new things that I didnt previously know about the Holocaust and her story is
interesting because most stories of Holocaust survivors Ive read are ones where the
survivor was placed in the worst work camps for Jews were placed in. It was also nice to
hear a survivor story from a younger perspective, while listening to her story it played out
like a coming of age story because of how young she was during the Holocaust and like
she said herself near the end of the interview even though she was just fourteen when she
came to America she had aged beyond her years from living in a Polish ghetto and the
work camps.

What makes Revas story memorable for me, as I mentioned above, is because of
how young Reva was during the Holocaust, her story, for me was like a fresh breath of air
after having to read or listen to the same survivor stories over the years. Its not often that
we get a childs perspective on the Holocaust because survivors were either too young to
remember the events or they were too young to work so the Nazis killed them. Revas
story is memorable to me because it plays out like a coming of age where the main
character, Reva, loses her innocence because of the war similar to the short story the Red
Badge of Courage where we have another young protagonist lose his youthful innocence

because of a war. Revas story is different from your everyday survivor story because its
a mix of a Holocaust survival story and a coming of age story and thats what makes
Revas story memorable to me.

I learned a few new things about the Holocaust I didnt previously know before
hand. The first thing I learned doesnt necessarily involve the Holocaust its more to do
with the behavior of the German soldiers occupying Poland in the beginning of the war.
Reva said that the soldiers were nice to the Polish people and organized bread and food
lines as to gain the trust of the Polish and Jewish people before ruining their lives just
weeks later. The other thing I learned was that the Germans kept some children in the
work camps, before I had always assumed that children who were too young to work
were killed by the Nazis and not recorded and kept in the barracks of the work camps.

What surprised me the most while listening to Revas story was how well her
siblings stayed together during the Holocaust and never turned on each other. Throughout
the Holocaust most family members were either separated immediately or they were no
longer family after spending time in the work camps adopting the mindset of survival of
the fittest by betraying their family members or refusing to help them when they need
help. Revas sister taking her place when roll called to be placed on a train surprised me
because self sacrifice for a family member in the work camps was seldom seen because
of how the Nazis turned the prisoners into just lifeless shells of their former selves doing
whatever it takes to survive.