People Essay

“Two Seed of Sarah”

As you read the book SEED OF SARAH, one would realize that the author was describing her experiences in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. These experiences are documented by her in the most charismatic and eye opening method. Although her experiences were remembered after her containment in the camp, her memory was awakened or stirred up with certain events that she witnessed later in life sometimes in the company of Ike her husband. As the story goes on , the reader will be able to understand the authors daily life and concerns as a young girl growing up in Hungary in the shadow of Nazi Germany and how the authors life changed in this period, understand how the author’s experience of her deportation and her incarceration in Auschwitz influence Isaacson’s views on human nature and her faith ,see how she cope with the daily life in the camp and how the author learned about herself and others in this environment, and finally the reader will be able to have an account about the essential nature of National Socialism and the role of anti-Semitism in Nazi ideology. As the story started the author was able to give great insight to daily life and concerns as a young girl growing up in Hungary in the shadow of Nazi Germany and how life changed in this period. In one of the moments in the story can be a bit surprising as a reader, was in the time when she and her husband were traveling in Trinidad. She recalls, “In February 1973, “my husband and I spent vacation in Trinidad, farther than we’d ever been before, and on our way Martinez 2 back, we decided to detour through Venezuela. In Caracas, we bumped into a couple of English speaking boys lugging costumes, who explained that they were students at a /Jewish day school on their way to a Purim festival, the students were to perform in a play depicting scripture that was in the Old Testament, which she was familiar with. The part of the play which she first mentioned, “I recalled an Abraham with a rams horn and David with a harp, a female slave of Egypt, and Moses with twin cardboard tablets on his back It was a striped dress worn by one of the characters in the play that prompted her husband to think about who the girl in the dress reminded him of?” she asked him and he asked” the one in chains?” Why she represents you, of course!” “Oh no! She cried her body pimpling with goose flesh. After all the girl was chained and was wearing a yellow star. Ike asked of her feelings on the play, “I find it disturbing she said” (PREFACE HOW CAN I SMILE)? She recalls her aspirations and plans, of what she would study at the university before her containment by the Nazi’s. These recollections were instrumental in her memory of her time shared with her family and other Hungarian Jewish prisoners. She describes her daily life in Hungary before the German invasion of her town. Recalling her gymnasium was a private institution, which her professor mentioned to her, because of her concern and awareness that Hitler was anti-Semitic and after the occupation of Austria, Her father tried to ease her concern, telling her that their town was a far reach from the German military, somehow giving her a false sense of security. These memories were good memories at first but then came an announcement through their radio on the BBC station, that the German’s had been successful in the invasion of Austria. She recalls her father kneeling in front of their radio, consumed with a look of uncertainty and disbelief.

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Yet due to the author’s experience of her deportation and her incarceration in Auschwitz influence Isaacson’s views on human nature and her faith. As a result she later asked her father if he felt that she should not take part in the play at school and he willingly consented to her resignation, in fear of the school administrations anticipated request that she quit on the grounds that she was a Jew. The next day she went straight to her professor, asking him if he thought she should not be in the play as her father thought. The play went on as scheduled, but as she fulfilled her role in the program reciting her poem with both nervousness and excitement; she was interrupted “Shut up, Jewess! A belligerent voice thundered from the void.”(P.10 Seed of Sarah) This is a powerful marker in her story, it shook me just by reading, and I can imagine how she must have felt. Being a highly intellectual young girl I’m sure she anticipated what was to come, she willed herself to finish the poem, and was commended the next morning by Dr. Biczos , ”Excellent performance! Your voice is well suited to a large auditorium”P.11 (THE SEED OF SARAH). Her life in Hungary remained the same for awhile, she still attended the same school, and had the same professors, of who had ignored Nazi’s alterations of original text where fact was now fiction and vice-versa, “After the occupation of Austria on March 13, 1938, the condition of Hungarian Jews deteriorated daily. “In May discrimination was sanctioned by first Jewish Law, causing economic hardships.”p.12 (SEED OF SARAH) she writes that although the politics were ignored by most teachers. She writes of one teacher Aladar Kovary, her history teacher, the only exception; who had suddenly emerged as an avowed anti-Semite. Other than this teacher, her life in her town remained mostly the same, with an exception of the barbed wire fence that contained them in isolation under Nazi occupation, and control. Her time spent the concentration camps were challenging times of spirit, mind and body. She and her Martinez 4 family along with countless others endured verbal, psychological and physical abuse on a daily basis. Mean while the author learned about herself and others in this environment, and the author was able to give an account about the essential nature of National Socialism and the role of anti-Semitism in Nazi ideology. Subsequently she was influenced profoundly in her life by her and her families deportation and subsequent incarceration in Auschwitz, her faith in God helped her get through her experience and her views and faith of humanity was tainted and questioned daily, while enduring starvation and torture. Weakness is a cause of ignorance, much like the supporters of the Nazi regime, who were only concerned with the removal of the Jewish people, and not the actual methods of extermination. So as the story comes to a close one can again get the human side of what it was like to have been apart of this period in the history of Nazi Germany and the brutally that accrued to so many. As a reader one could understand the authors daily life and concerns as a young girl growing up in Hungary in the shadow of Nazi Germany and how the authors life changed in this period .Can also understand the author’s experience of her deportation and her incarceration in Auschwitz influence Isaacson’s views on human nature and her faith and then in the end how she was able to cope with the daily life in the camp and what the author learned about herself and others in this environment. She credits her upbringing for her survival in these camps but forgives her assailants after all was said and done.

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Works Cited

Isaacson, Judith Mayar. Seed of Sarah. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Cited: Isaacson, Judith Mayar. Seed of Sarah. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.