Background Research

Background Research Worksheet
Book Selection: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Author: John Boyne

Instructions: For each question, respond in one or more paragraphs of at least four complete sentences. Include supporting facts and details from your research in each response. Provide the sources for your supporting research.
Using support from your research materials, identify and explain any political, social, economic, or cultural issues that may shape the story.
The Holocaust was going on during this book, and this was a time when many children were vulnerable, and the Nazis killed many young kids, but the chances of survival for Jewish and non-jewish teenagers(13-18) were greater because they could be deployed at forced labor.
Source: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007820 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007817

Imagine what it would be like to live in this situation. Using supporting details from your research, discuss the greatest challenges people might face under these circumstances. When some people are asked about something in the past that somebody else went through, they say, “I can’t imagine…..”
And in this case, I really can’t imagine how awful it would be to live in this situation. To be sent to a camp where you are stuffed on a train with hundreds of thousands of people, and you don’t know what is going on. You are separated from your family, the only thing you know. You are put into a gas chamber along with millions of other kids who are too young to work for the German’s, and elderly people who are too old to work. To make it easier on the Germans’, they tell you and your family that is going to be used for forced labor that you’re going to take a shower, and you’ll be back later. But, they never, ever, get to see you again.
If you live in the ghetto, you are left without shelter and food because you are unproductive and, “useless eaters.” And finally, it all stopped when the Nazis surrendered, but it was too late for most, they already were gone, or had a important piece of them that was left in the camp chambers. Sources: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007820 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007817

Based on your research, describe how these circumstances would affect a person’s identity development (crisis, commitment, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, achievement).
The personal identities of people who were in the Nazi camps would be much, much more sophisticated than the average person now a days.
In Nazi camps, the identity crisis of a lot of people was most likely, ‘how do I stay alive?’ while peoples identity crisis in todays world might be something as little as, ‘who is a good friend?’.
Kids and elderly people didn’t have a commitment during this time period, because they didn’t have the chance to decide what they wanted to do. The Nazi’s decided for them.
People in the Nazi camps didn’t have identity diffusion because they couldn’t make any decisions on their own, the German’s made them all for them.
They didn’t have identity foreclosure either, because they were not able to commit to anything at the camps because they were just ordered to do whatever the German’s wanted.
I suppose that some people in the camps could have an identity moratorium, and it might be, ‘Do I run away and risk being killed? Or should I just stay and work until this is over?’.
The identity achievement of one in a Nazi camp might be, ‘after struggling to decide he wanted to stay and work, or run away and have the chance of being killed, he decided to wait, and finally when the war was over and the Nazi’s surrendered, he was set free.’

Sources: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007820 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007817