The Holocaust...

I grew up going to school with a large Jewish population. Lots of my friends to this day are Jewish. So, in History class, whenever we discussed the holocaust, it was a very tense subject. I was too naive back when we studied that in High School to completely understand how horrible it was. All the things Jewish people had to endure through during World War II was awful; I can only imagine what it must have been like. Like the Factories in Europe, there were camps in the islands surrounding Japan during WWII. My grandfather passed away about 2 years ago and was a POW in Japanese camps for over 3 years. He described how torturous the conditions were while he was a prisoner and how other marines and troopers were dying all around him. While I was reading these two books, I thought of how similar these depictions are of my grandfather's experience. He never described the eerie smoke stacks and the haze they created because he never said if there were stacks where they incinerated humans. The vivid description throughout the book is sickening at times. What happened in that time was repulsive, Yolen and Wiesel bring it back to life with beautiful writing for such a horrid time. The Devil's Arithmetic and Night are great books which I would recommend to any high schooler willing to read about The Holocaust.