Book Review 1

 Entry 2- 

Research and Reflection

Topic: Quote from The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa

""Dirty people," I heard. 
Had I heard it right? What have we done for me to have to endure that? What crime had we committed?"(Page 9)

    A bit of backstory behind this quote. The novel, a historical fiction, at this point is taking place in Berlin, 1939. People said this to this twelve year old Jewish girl. 

    Historical Information: Doing some research further to really get into this quote I looked up a timeline of things Hitler did when he came to power. Important dates/years on this timeline included: 

• 1935, Hitler created the Nuremberg Laws. These laws essentially stripped Jewish people of their civil rights as German citizens, they were also defined as a separate race. With his new law, marriage or sexual relations between Germans and Jews was forbidden. 
• In 1936, he started promoting Nazism to the world. 
• In the later part of the year 1939, the "New Order" was put in place. This was a plan to abuse and eliminate Jews and Slavs. 

    Now in the book, this girl has a rich family. They own a hotel or apartment complex. German tenants in the building told this to the young girl because of her background. They call her and one of her friends "dirty" because they are Jewish. In 1939, there was a lot of racism towards anyone who was not German, actually they also discriminated against anyone who was not considered to be the perfect Aryan; having blonde hair and blue eyes made you "favorable". 

    Racism is seen throughout so many countries and so many different time periods and we still can see racism as well as sexism and other types of discrimination today. People often argue that racism or any other discriminatory actions are taught. In the book, a child is called dirty by an adult based on her race. The adult is a mother and says it with her child next to her, the child used to attend school with the young Jewish girl and they were once friends. However, she picked up from her mothers habits and either did not say anything or spit at her old friend. I guess you could say that racism is in fact taught. 

    The reason I picked this quote from the book is that up until then there were not perfect hints that this girl was Jewish. The title is misleading. The German Girl, she was not considered German by anyone in Germany in that time period. She then goes off on a rant explaining how she is German, more German than most of the "real" Germans. She even explains how. I guess I picked this quote because I keep going back to it. I know that the book takes place 80+ years ago but we know that this was a real event that happened. Racism still goes on- people are still so mean to each other.

Link to timeline I used: https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/nazifica.htm