The book we read was I have Lived A
Thousand Years by Livia Bitton- Jackson. Elli Friedman is the one who tells the story of her life during 1944-1945.
It is about a girl name Elli and her journey through the ghetto and through Auschwitz concentration camp. She wants to go to Budapest where her brother is right now, but her brother came home one night. He said that the Germans invaded Budapest. Her parents made him go back to school.
Elli likes a boy at school. There is a week when the Jewish people have to wear a yellow star. When she wears this to school she gets the bad news that her school is closing and now she wants to say goodbye to the boy she likes. When she is exiting school these boys are behind her teasing her saying “Hey Jew Girl, Hey Jew Girl”. After school, she meets the boy and he wants her to meet him at the library. Elli couldn’t go because Aldof Hitler made the Jews not talk to any religion other then the Jewish religion or have contact with people that are not Jewish.
Elli had to leave her home so Germans could live in it. Her family was allowed to take one room of their house. They went to the ghetto and after a few days her dad had to go away to dig ditches for the Germans. After her dad left, they had to go to Auschwitz concentration camp where she and her mother got separated from her Aunt Serena and her brother.
They got split up, she and her mom had to goes in this building where the guards made them strip, take showers, pick shoes that didn’t fit, and made them wear gray dresses. Elli met her cousins and her Aunt Sally.
A few weeks later she and her mom had to go to a different building. After a few weeks she went on another train to someplace else. After they got off the train a Nazi police officer asked her mom a question and she answered, “if I have to I will”.
Elli has to go to the gas chamber because she didn’t pass the selection, but Elli escapes and goes back to her mother. They are both taken to Muhldorf and they get transported to Waldlager and Elli meets her brother behind a barbwire fence. On April 24, 1945 Elli and is evacuated. Everyone is loaded into trains.
The train is attacked by the U.S. Air Force. On May 7, 1945 Germany surrenders. Elli arrives back to her home which is called Samorin in Czechoslovakia.
When they arrive back, home, her family receives news that her father is dead. Elli goes back to her school and her family is going to emigrate to the U.S.A.
For the I-search project there were five topics we had to cover. They were Social Studies, Math, ELA, Science, and Art. The connections in the book for Social Studies were a map of Poland and Hungary. We told where she went in the book, about the places we read up to. For the math section we got the yellow Star of David and we made a quiz. We did the yellow star of David because one of the chapters in the book is “The Yellow Star.” In The science section, we told about why people have blue eyes and why Hitler killed the babies that were born because they didn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes. In the Art section we made two poems up. One is about Daddies and the other is about Concentration Camps. We did the one about Daddies because in the book there is a chapter called “Daddy, how could you leave me?” We did the one about the concentration camps because they had to do work all day because of the Germans.
In conclusion we learned about the yellow star of David and why the Germans made them wear it. We also learned the way the people got treated in the concentration camps and what kind of things they had to overcome. We understand why the people were killed but we mostly understand that they were killed for no reason. We learned why people have blue eyes and why Hitler killed the babies that didn’t have blonde hair and blue eyes.
By: Katie and Courtney
Concentration Camps, how mean!
They make me scream!
Work all day nightmares all night
You will get wounds that sting and bite
German soldiers shoot and kill
Preying like a pack of wolves
Jewish people are scared
Germans do not care
They try to hide and run away
Digging graves in which they’ll lay
Concentration camps how mean!
They make me scream!
By: Katie