Sophie Turner-Zaretsky: Am I Catholic?

The holocaust was a grave experience for many, in the follow text it will be analyzed the testament of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky and her experience during the holocaust.  She was born Selma Schwarzwald to parents Daniel and Laura in the industrial city of Lvov, two years before Germany invaded Poland. Daniel was a successful businessman who exported timber and Laura had studied economics. The Germans occupied Lvov in 1941. After her father's disappearance on her fifth birthday in 1941, Sophie and her mother procured false names and papers and moved to a small town called Busko-Zdroj. They became practicing Catholics to hide their identities. Sophie gradually forgot that she was Jewish. It was not until after their liberation and move to London that Sophie learned the truth about her past.

1) The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising:

The Warsaw Ghetto Map

The holocaust was the genocide of millions of jews during the World War II. Many events of deportations and burnings of cities and towns because of jews presence occur during the holocaust. But, from all the events we will talk of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and we will also talk of the, antisemitic, blood libel believes. A Blood libel was the believed the jews killed and used human blood during their religious gathering, and under that believe and other believes of the jews there were judge and persecuted during the war. Between July and September of 1942 hundred of thousands of jew were, killed, deported to forced-labor fields or left in the street to die in the Warsaw ghetto. 

Warsaw Ghetto Execution

This caused that, by fear, the remaining jews of the ghetto create a self-defense unit known as the Jewish Combat Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa; ZOB). At first few jews were part of this organization. But in October of 1942 when there were orders to eliminate all the jews of the Warsaw Ghetto involved in the self defense unit there were over 750 jews in it. They obtain guns, explosives and swords to fight, and liberate 5000 to 6000 Warsaw ghetto jews that were to be transfer into a forced-labor camp. This causes the operation for the Warsaw ghetto annihilation, the germans planned to destroy the whole ghetto and its residents, but when they arrived the ZOB uprise to defend the ghetto. After months of fighting, 750 untrained kids uprise and defend de jews against thousand of nazis. The Warsaw ghetto was and forever will be a symbol of jewish strength during the war.

2) What she talks about:

In her testimony Sophie turner talks about her live after she moved to another town. She said that her mother was and interpreter for gestapo because she spoke german and polish. She said they lived in very poor conditions,  but her mother had a job and she could go to school. She explained how she was, for every body, a normal polish five-years old girls. She said that her physical appearance was one of a polish girl and that their were safe making people believing it. She said that she was very catholic and made believe that she was catholic, she said that her class was very anti semitic and that so was she. She also said that she liked going to church and became the prefect of attendance in the school’s church. She said that she arrived home and talk to her mother about anti semitic thing and abouT how polishes laughed at the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Though the mother, she said, always answered by saying she knew nice jews. At the end she said that she didn’t knew about her past or her real religion, that her mother couldn’t tell her about it. She said her safety was based on her being clueless of her real religion.

Sophie Turner-Zaretsky

3) The theme of her testimony:

I believe the general topic of the testimony is the holocaust and what jews did to survive it. And the theme in Sophie’s testimony is that sometime, for our and our love ones safety, we must lie and pretend to be something we are not. Because in the World War II the was a target in jews lives, many jews had to lie and create new identities, to hide their truth to be safe. Because of affirmations that others might have, truthful or not, some have to hide and to lie for their own well being. Sophie’s testimony talks about how she her mother had to hide and even lie to her one daughter for safety. Usually lying is bad but in cases like Sophie’s one we can held it against her because she did it for her own safety.

Sophie and her mom

4) What do I think:

I think that the holocaust was one of the worst moments of the past century and that for a very big group of people it is and forever more will be a scar in their life. The testimony of Sophie shows how sometime we are forced to lie and forced to do things we disagree with for our own well being because powerful groups of people would hold the truth against you and mistreat your or worst, in the case of many poor unfortunate jews.

Bibliography:

- Sophie Turner-Zarestky. USHMM. Oral history: ophie Turner-Zarestky.  08/06/15. web http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_oi.php?MediaId=4985

- USHMM. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 08/06/15. web. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005188

- ADL. Blood libel: a false, incendiary claim against Jews. 08/06/15. Web http://www.adl.org/anti-semitism/united-states/c/what-is-the-blood-libel.html?referrer=https://www.google.com.co/#.VXZNaZOG-a4