Choiceless Choices

Choiceless Choices

"Why should Daddy show me the spot? Why? Why should I know about the jewels? Why? Tell me, why? Tell me! I don't want to know the spot! I don't want to be the one to survive! I don't want to survive alone! Alone, I don't want to know about anything! I don't want to know!" -Elli pg. 28, I Have Lived a Thousand Years

This quote means a lot.To me, it means she doesn’t want to know the spot where the jewels are because then she’ll know maybe only one of her family members will survive. And maybe it’s her.  The Nazi's kept on taking Elli’s personal things like her bike she didn’t even get to ride yet and her mother’s jewelry. But they hid some jewelry in the ground somewhere. Their family doesn’t have a choice to make. It’s not fair that they can’t take whatever they want to the ghetto because they had to turn in their valuable things. If I was in her spot, I’d feel the same way because her anger is building up. It seems to me that she doesn’t want to be left by herself when her family dies since that’s why her dad told her just in case. 

But in the movie “The Pianist”, there is a clip where a Jewish family is being kicked out of their house and they were able to bring anything they wanted. They were more of a rich family and they had more valuable things in their house. A difference with the book is before they left to go into the ghetto, they were told to turn in all jewels and pretty much everything that was valuable. Every ghetto had similar rules but it sometimes just depended on the soldier that was there guarding the ghetto. I can also make a connection to this because everywhere we go, there is always going to be different rules to follow just like when they had to go from ghetto to ghetto. Or even if the Jews were going into the camps. The theme is choiceless choices. They had a decision chosen for them and they have to follow orders. I can make a connection with my parents and I because when they tell me to do something it’s better to just listen to them then disobey and get in trouble like getting grounded from my phone or having to do a lot of chores for my mom. There are always going to be consequences if you don’t obey rules that you are given from people that have more authority. Having more power over someone, like the Nazi’s have over the Jews, is a good thing to have if you’re the one that has the power because you can get the unpowerful people to do whatever you order them to do. The Jews didn’t have to listen but the Jews did because the Nazi’s would lie to them whenever they asked question. In the book “I Have Lived For a Thousand Years”, she asked if she would get her clothes back and one of the soldiers said they would get their belongings back but Elli knew she was never getting her stuff back.