Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Cage Daniella Volpe

The Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender

This is the true story of Ruth Minsky Sender, a holocaust survivor. At the beginning of the story Ruth, her mother and her 6 other siblings are betrayed by their long time family friend who were German and they were sent to a ghetto. After a year in the ghetto their mother gets taken away and most like was sent to a death camp. Ruth is then left to take care of her two brothers after already losing her brother Laibele. She develops malnutrition and calcium deficiency when the ghetto is cleared and their family is separated when they are sent to concentration camps. Ruth makes friends in the camp but her health is questioned when she can not use her glasses so is unsafe using the machinery in the factory. Ruth and the camp were then transferred to another camp where Ruth's health conditions worsened. She probably should have been sent to a death camp by this point but instead was taken into town so she could see a professional doctor to take care of her worsening legs. The camp did this because she wrote poetry that she would read to the other girls in the camp and it kept the girls working and pushing forward. After she was treated the camp got sent to yet another camp where they only spent about three to four months. Then one day, when the camp leaders took all of the girls out to the forest where they were going to all be executed. Except, all of the leaders ran away abandoning the camp for hours until allied forces found them and told them the camp had been liberated. Ruth had survived when her luck did not look good.
Ruth never found her brothers that were sent to camps. To this day she still has nightmares about the horrors of the concentration camps. She says she will never forget anyone that she met or knew from the holocaust, especially the ones that she lost.

Questions:
1. After WWII would the world ever allow a country to commit something like the holocaust ever again??
2. What would everyday life be like in a concentration camp??


6 comments:

Adam B. 7-8 said...

1. I think that after WWII this will never happen again. Because of increased news coverage and worldwide media these types of things won't go undetected for very long.

Kyle N.1-2 said...

1. I think it is still happening. Unfortunately, it's still going on in Africa, in places like Darfur, Rwanda, and Sudan. It's racial war. But I don't think it (and I surely don't hope) it ever goes to the extent of Hitler's extermination of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust without anything being done.

2. I think it would be horrible. I think I'd rather have been gassed. You get up from a near 20 hour workday, work another 20 hours on 1 serving of hot water as "soup", then go to sleep squeezed in a space unimaginably small and uncomfortable. It would be the worst thing (for me) next to death.

Hannah J. 7-8 said...

1.I don't think we necessarily allowed the Holocaust, I think we were trying our best not to get involved in european affairs which was something that FDR was contempt with at the time. The world does allow things like WWII happen, it's called genocide and it is present a lot in Africa. And in those cases almost no foreign powers step in to help them.
2.Life in a concentration camp would be awful, it would defintely test my want to survive.

Garret Edward Patrick Graehling 1/2 said...

I disagree with Adam. There is genocide in Darfur at the moment and no one seems to want to do anything about it.

Mrs. Sherwood said...

Thread graded.

Jacob C. 1-2 said...

1. There will never be something like the holocaust ever again. The world is globally covered by media, information is easily leaked and transmitted. Even under the highest secrecy, a nation would never be able to commit genocide on a large scale.

2. Everyday life would definitely be hard and depressing. I would feel as if everyday I was coming closer and closer to death.