Final thoughts and Thank you.

The novel had a great way of showing how the Holocaust was and of telling Vladek's story and how he saw the Holocaust. My reaction was that the novel ended great and that it was a happy ending. A big theme to the novel is bystander. Many people stood there and did not try to stop the Holocaust, they did not help Jews in anyway or they just did nothing. Being a bystander has impact on the Holocaust because people could have saved many lives but did not. Bystander was a big theme and if others would have been an upstander instead of bystanders things could have been different.

The Teaching Tolerance Project helped us understand the Holocaust in a different way. Blogging was the main tool that helped us share our thoughts and hear from others that gave their ideas and comments. The contributors commented and gave their reactions to our thoughts. Using blogger people would correct and connect with our posts. Thank you for contributing and sharing your thoughts and comments to help us better understand the Holocaust.

Finale

My reaction to the end of the second novel is that it was a happy ending. After Vladek finished explaining the whole story to Artie, he decided to stop the recording and went to sleep right after he met up with Anja. So after that Vladek went to sleep. The sad part of the end of the story was when it showed how Vladek and Anja died. My thoughts on this book was that it is prolly the best book about the Holocaust in a non-graphic or violent way. The way that Vladek, the main character, explained it was a different way than told before. He stated the main parts and then he added small little events during the main parts. The main theme in the whole book was basically being a bystander. Vladek was a bystander so many times in the book and he could have done something to not be a bystander. I learned a lot of what happened in Auschwitz/ Birkenau because of how Vladek explained it. The things the Nazis would make the Jews or any other people do. The kinds of gruesome activity involved in beatings, killings, or any bloody activity. I also learned that there was a lot of polish people in the camps because of them against the Nazis. From this blogging project, I have learned that the book I have been reading, is a good book to blog about because of the interesting things it has on it. A big thank you to everyone to commented on our blog and gave great comments. Hopefully I could do this again later in the future, thanks!

Ending

The book I read was Maus 1&2 . In the ending of the book Maus 2 was was a good ending. Where the war is over and the Jews are released. They are free. Valdek is try to find his wife and at the end he does find here.this book showed what the  Author father had to go through in the war.  One of the thing that made the book better was Pictures . It shows who mouse were and other charters. Like: the mouse were Jews,the cats were Germans, the pigs were Polish and, the Dogs were  America. These character showed and lot of meaning because cats beats the rats , the dog beats the cat,the pig is neutral. This book was one of the best book I have read in the section of historical books. it  tells the story of real people in cartoons and you can see what happens in the camps with the help of the picture.

This book  was a good book it had a lot of themes. One of the best themes in the book was bystander. In the book there was a lot  place there were bystander. On one page a Jewish man was killed and the people around them did nothing. They just stood there doing nothing and  then they just walked away.This made angry because that was a human being. And then another time after the war a Jewish man was going back to his house and there he found a  different man living there then the man punched the Jew . The man who was living there called the police come and beat him.This shows bystander because even though the war was over people didn’t want Jews around them .

Nazis have too much power.

I think the Jews felt as if they had no power at all. The Nazis took away their identity away by shaving their heads and taking their stuff. They didn’t even tell them what’s going to happen to them. The Jews prolly felt very uncomfortable standing there naked.

The Nazis used their power over Jews. There has been times where Police over use their power. When Police over use their power people will still obey to them because they do not want to get hurt. In this case the People are the Jews and the Police are the Nazis
.

Being a bystander is just as bad as being the offender, perpetrator, criminal, or culprit.

I believe that the Police may have feared the Nazis or did not like the Jews either that is why they did not do anything to help stop the hate against Jews. People usually follow along with the majority of the people and what they think so if they hate Jews than other people hate Jews too fit in with the rest of the others. Two people killed shows that they do not like the Jews enough to kill them. I think the Polish should not have treated the Jews like how they did they have no reason and shouldn't have kept the hate against Jews going.

Being a bystander is just as bad as being the offender, perpetrator, criminal, or culprit. When you have the power to stop something and you don’t you allow the bad things to keep going on. A great example would be bullying if you are a bystander you just let the victim keep getting bullied. The Police allowed the Polish to treat the Jews with no respect. Allowing the Polish to treat the Jews like how they did the Polish felt that they had more power than the Jews did so they kept treating the Jews badly.

Prisoners of war

“Attention! All prisoners will carry our dead and wounded to the waiting red cross trucks.” Nazi officer, Maus, (pg. 50)

This quote shows how the Nazis treated their prisoners when they captured them. Also on the page you see that the Nazis would make their prisoners clean up and take care of their men. It also shows how the Nazis could be mean because on the same page a Nazi was going to shoot Vladek because he was walking towards the river. It can also connect to if you have older siblings because your older sibling could boss you around and make you clean up after them and they could boss you around. If you were someone in charge of someone would you boss someone around?

This quote reminds me of the theme of fear. Because if the Nazi's prisoners wouldn’t listen to the Nazis then they would've gotten killed because when Vladek went to go get the man he killed the Nazi looked like he was about to shoot Vladek because he was walking towards the river. This reminds me of a older sibling or parents because if someone older than me asks me to do something then I would do it because I don’t want to get in trouble.

If someone older than you asked you to do something would you do it?

Friends and Food..

“ Don’t worry about friends. Believe me, they don’t worry about you. They just worry about getting a bigger share of your food.” Maus ll, Vladek, PG. 56 I think this quote means that people in Auschwitz and in other concentration camps cared more about food than friends because food was the thing they needed the most. Some people in camps don’t really care about friends as much as they care about food. I found in one of my resources that belongings and food were both on top of a Pyramid of Survival. Which means that food is one of the biggest things that you need for survival. My reaction to this was that I totally agree with Vladek on how he explains food is needed to survive. Food was amongst the most important things in camps/ghettos. This event could be also related to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. According to Google,”His theories parallel many other theories of human development Psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, Self-Actualization and Self-Transcendence needs to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.” Vladek said this when he was working on someone's roof and trying to be some sort of tiles on it. Another job of the horrible camp of Auschwitz. I would relate this to all parts of the ghetto where everyone was crowded. I would connect this to survival because its basically surviving a living nightmare. Friends and food were rare, just like the chances of surviving the camps. Reason being is that it was such a hard life in the ghetto too, but it was much harder to find food. So many children smuggled their way out to go find some food, even it was even a piece of bread the children still went out to get some sort of food. The children smuggling out was dangerous because of the consequences they had or risk if they were caught. .