Mira’s father can no longer stand the humiliation and repression. Until recently, a respected doctor, he was not allowed to exercise more since he was shipped to the ghetto of Warsaw with his family his profession. After all, he has put his passion and his life to an end.
His suicide has left a mentally broken widow and three fatherless children in a small one-room apartment. The depressed mother is almost silent; she does not leave her bed. To meet the needs of all the sixteen year old Mira cares.
Her delicate little sister Hannah (12) is in her fantasy world refuge and consolation against the gray, cruel everyday life. On her big brother Simon they can not count more unfortunately. He went his own way and has can be used as a Jewish policeman. This he can take for themselves all sorts of benefits. Among his duties in the service of the German occupiers to spy on his fellow countrymen and to betray the Nazis; what else he do everything in detail must Mira wants to know.
They despised him for his selfish opportunism.
Still, the remaining family comes thanks Miras use reasonably handle. Risking their lives, the girl enters at night the sides and smuggled food from the Polish part of the city over the wall into the ghetto. Whether this succeeds depends on that her secret passage not blows up at the cemetery. But one day she stopped on the Polish side of three men of the worst kind, “Schmalzowniks” call the ghetto inhabitants such Polish thugs who deliver against bounty Jews to the Gestapo.
Already Mira looks in prison, where they would be subjected to torture and soon sentenced to death. The heartless fellows be deterred by anything from its bustle, neither Mira’s protestations of innocence nor by their unusual for Jews green eyes nor a mad laughter with which they mocked the three; not even their threat to go with them to the police, impressed the informers
Until suddenly a young man appears out of nowhere and Mira holds out a rose. “A rose for my rose,” he says and kisses her passionately. As Mira learns later, the alleged student whom have sent her an angel needs to save her life, himself a Jew -. And a resistance fighter
“Everyone is free to decide what kind of person he would be little Mira “,” experienced “by Rubinstein, the ghetto-Jester (one of the many historical characters in this novel). Already with the previously introduced characters, the bandwidth is stretched as it answers any threat existential for itself in the extreme situation the question: “What kind of person you want to be?” One resigned, the other come to terms, others stand up for fellow human beings who are worse off, and some trees on themselves to fight against oppression.
From day to day the situation worsened in the ghetto. Not only must Mira other ways to locate, in order to keep her family afloat; It is also to meet ever new policy decisions, should be how to respond to the ever perfidious reprisals. Let they still real freedom of choice, or performs any way in any case only in one and the same dead end? So the Nazis announce the “Offer” for the “relocation” to volunteer in the East. A little later they drive people by force from their homes, street by street, and gather them on the “hub” for onward travel …
Also, two hundred children from an orphanage to be taken there. Mira observed as disciplined and dignified follow their warden, a song on the lips and proudly a flag held high. The doctor and educator Janusz Korczak, the children entrusted to him not let her go alone the road to death.
Mira’s family is still a while away with it. Simon has built them a hiding place and provide them with the basic necessities. Duration of such a fragile solution in an extremely dangerous environment, of course not – soon they are discovered and shot on the spot. Only Mira escapes the captors; she happened to go when they came. From then on it is all on his own; everyone who sees them has their life in their hands. What can a man now still be
Mira chooses the path of active struggle?. She joins the resistance
By the situation ever more dramatic tapers, take the Mira demanded decision of scope; it is itself the mistress of life and death. In the human cauldron of herded Jews her pushing a woman a little baby in her arms. Mira should rise or with him in the Extermination drop it on the ground, where it walked on or shot by soldiers? Later, they see how a little boy to hang around to her quarters before well-camouflaged entrance; he seeks a hiding place for himself, or he was sent by the SS, for exploring the vicinity? In any case, he brings the entire resistance group in danger. You do not have to shoot him
Almost a month – from 19 April to 16 May 1943 – were desperate inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto against their Nazi oppressors. The resources were available to them in view of the superiority of their opponents ridiculously inadequate, their determination all the more steadfast. The approximately 750 people, mostly young people had, what they was important lost their relatives, friends and everything in the previous horrible years. They will have known that they have no real chance to win their battle. But the misery of hunger, to set an awareness, and the tiny, hoping to escape the death trains to the concentration camps, gives each individual strength and courage. Earlier attitudes – moral cowardice, quietly the fate revealed persevere in the hope that it will not have come as bad – have become redundant and yielded geballtem hatred. Without resistance, no one wants to give more.
“long 28 days” is telling a great novel, the story thrilling and memorable. With the protagonist Mira we are experiencing first hand the worsening everyday life in the Warsaw ghetto with all the excesses that brought the power machine of the Nazis to the Jews until the bitter end. Trost has the positive at least for Mira output of the action, and the woven fantasy story in which Mira her dead sister several times met, brings her and the reader through moments of breathing. Most importantly, we are confronted with the question under changing circumstances and perspectives which choices the person has, how he uses them and what consequences they can time.
David Safier (whose grandparents in Buchenwald and Lodz were killed) here has a youth book (presented for at least thirteen), the adults will read with profit. It is both in the Kindler publishing house (see above) as well as the David Safier: “28 days lang” (Rotfuchs-Ausgabe) at
Another suitable also for young people with a book exciting and touching story of the Warsaw ghetto’s “Jacob’s coat” by Eva Weaver; read Rezension zu Eva Weaver: “Jacob’s Coat” on books reviews “
28 days of David Safier Review. (2019, Nov 18). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/28-days-of-david-safier-my-review/