Throw Away By Heather Huffman

Throw Away is about the love story of two characters named Jessie Jones, a prostitute and Gabriel Adam, a cop. Although I'm only half way done I know that Jessie's and Gabriel's love will only cause complications. Jessie, who fell into the wrong hands when she was kicked out of foster care at 18 tries really hard to stay positive about her job. Then her boss gets into trouble with the "big dogs" and attracts the attention from the police so he makes Jessie and her roommate work along a dangerous street so that they can report back to him anything they find unusual. Then Jessie meets Gabriel (on her day off) and without knowing he's the cop investigating her bosses case she falls in love with him. Things start getting worse and worse because first Jessie can't date, second her boss is getting into a lot of debt and trouble and third Gabriel is drafted and has to go to Vietnam not knowing that Jessie is now pregnant (Jessie doesn't know either). So now Jessie is trying to solve things her own way, which I don't think its a great idea because the way she's handing things is by living with Spencer to become a spy for the police. It's not like he's touching her or anything but I'm really excited to learn what happens next. I think Spencer is going to get beat up or worse killed. 

Tough Questions Note and Notice: 
So when Jessie starts dating Gabriel they always get into an argument about Jessie quitting her job but its not that simple. Because Jessie is Spencer's "favorite employee" he has her on a leash, repeatedly saying that Jessie is his property and that she will never have a life of her own. Jessie knows that if she tries to quite her job she could put both Gabriel and herself into extreme danger although it could also mean living her life with Gabriel. Gabriel has offered to take Jessie to the small town he grew up in, where he is sure Spencer and his screw won't find them but Jessie is hesitant. Jessie has to ask herself if she is welling to live a hidden and fear filled life with Gabriel or ending Spencer so that other girls can live their lives at the cost of maybe even getting killed.    

Night By: Elie Wiesel

So the book I'm reading in my Lit Circle is called Night by Elie Wiesel and the story is about the author's life during the Holocaust. See the events in the story happen very quickly and at the beginning of the story Elie and his family are very religious Jews who live in a community that is full of others like them. Then they start hearing rumors about the concentration camps and how the German military (Nazis) are conquering places in a matter of months but, they never really believe the rumors because, after all, its not happening in their community. Until the day did come when they are being moved out of the ghettoes and taken to an unknown destination. When they got to there distention they realized that they had been tricked and had arrived in a crematorium camp and they were going to get separated. Elie and his father were separated from the women in their family and they were then lead into a concentration camp, they were lucky. During the time that Elie and his father were in the concentration camp they had to do hard labor and survived only on soup, bread and coffee. I'd say the real story began during the winter of 1944. It was the start of the end of the Nazis so things became ruff, there were executions, beatings and less food. The concentration camp they were in got shut down and they had to run for miles to a far away deserted town until the Nazis could find another camp to send the Jews too. During their journey most died because of the snow or because they were shot by Nazi soldiers. By the end of the story Elie has to struggle to take care of his father, who became very ill and even though Elie nows that his father won't make it, he keeps taking care of him until the last day. Fortunately, as the Jews watched, the Russians were able to invade the camp and defeat the Nazi soldiers but even then, when the Jews were free they didn't think of revenge, only of provision.

The genre of this book is historical non-fiction. Elie Wiesel is a real person who went through something that really happened. Night is somewhat of a autobiography because the story is about someone's life written by that same person.

Holocaust Upstander/Bystander

After reading so much about the up standers and bystanders during the Holocaust, I think I understand a little about why people chose to stand up or stand by. First I would like to talk about why people became bystanders and stood by while they saw these horrible things happening to their neighbors, colleagues and friends. I believe the main reason why they stood by is because of fear. They saw how badly the Jews were being treated, plus the threat of being killed if they stood against the Nazis. People had to think about their families and themselves before they thought about other people. They were afraid for their lives and for those of their loved ones. Another major reason why people stood by was because they felt it didn't concern them. During Literature Class we read a poem written by a priest who spent eight and a half years in a Nazi concentration camp. In his poem he talked about how the Nazis came for the Jews, communists and trade unionist but he never spoke for them because he was none of those things. Until the Nazis came for him, then because no one was left to stand up for him he was taken. See being a bystander means being a person who witness but is not directly affected by actions of perpetrators but because they stand by and don't do anything they help shape their society in major ways. What the poem taught me was that because people never stood up for others the Nazis didn't have people standing against them so they did as they pleased, which was a major point in the Nazi success. On the other hand being an up stander means standing up for what you believe in and doing against what the perpetrator is doing. During class we learned about both Jewish resistance and non-jewish resistance. I know that the Jews could only do little because they had the Nazis against them but they managed to stand up for the reason of have the state of mind that if they are going to die they might as well die fighting. Jews started armed revolts in the ghettoes and attacked German tanks and soldiers. They joined Soviet partisan units to harass German soldiers and did everything to preserve their religion and traditions. Non-Jewish people helped too. Many people refused to join the German military and sheltered Jews in their homes. In fact they tried to assassinate Hitler although they only killed a high ranking Nazi Officer.

Since I started learning about the Holocaust, I keep asking myself whether I would have been an up stander or bystander. Honesty, I feel like I would have been a bystander because I would have been afraid. I'm always worried about the well being of my family so I think I would have been a bystander.