Kalie

  //The Seamstress A Memoir of Survival //By Seren Tuvel

**Summary: **

Being Jewish in the time of World War Two took bravery and courage in order to survive. Even before the Holocaust, Seren Tuvel, a young woman living in a small town in Romania, had to deal with being Jewish in an Antisemitism society. Throughout her childhood (before the Holocaust) Seren and her family were always frowned a pone. She had to go through everyday bullies at school that would make fun of her for being Jewish. Being intelligent, she won a scholarship to a Gentiles only Gymnasium in another town, and she accepted it. She started to go to school there but soon she became an outcast being Jewish. One of her teachers made a rude remark about Jews which finally drove her to quit the school. Instead of returning home after quitting the school, Seren wanted to work as an apprentice seamstress in town. Soon after that, the Nazis start to circle around Romania. Her sister, Ester, and her two friends come to live with her in order to escape the Nazis which had taken over the small town she used to live in. Not long after Ester and her two friends come, they are captured and taken to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp located in Germany. The four must come and stick together as they face the horrors in the concentration camp. Seren tells about stealing food to prevent starvation and suffering the brutal coldness. These four friends take risks and have courage in order to survive the Holocaust.

 **  Theme     **              **   :     **   The main theme of this story is to never give up. Seren has been through starvation and the cold and she says that the only thing that kept her alive was her motivation to live. Seren had her younger sister, Ester, and two friends with her at the camp and Seren had to look after them being the oldest and she had to stay alive to give them hope that they would live. Also after the war was over, Seren lost everything. Most of her family had died and her home belongs lost to the war. She had to continue with her live even though she has nothing left. “If one falls down, they have to stand back up.”

**<span style="font-size: 160%; color: rgb(239, 235, 26);">Opinions: ** In the book The Seamstress, the author, Seren Tuvel, gives good figurative language and is very descriptive throughout the book. Seren builds up her characters and setting very well. She characterizes the people in the story with lengthy paragraphs that builds the characters personalities. When she builds the setting it is like I’m overlooking the setting because she creates such a clear picture. Here is an example of one of her paragraphs describing a setting PG 45 “In the evenings we’d dine a restaurant with a garden and a dance floor. In the warm weather we sat outside by the rushing fountains nestled among the lavender and purple petunias and bright pink geraniums. The music from inside drifted out into the balmy air, mingling with gushing sounds of the fountains. We added to the noise with our own babbling, quibbling over whether the broiled meats were better at this restaurant of at the one we had been to on the previous Saturday night.” Being so in depth and illustrated made the story easier to understand, but in some parts of the book that got in detail about the war was hard to read because it was so sad. The book did educate me more about hoe the Nazis treated the Jews though.

[|First Link: Holocaust] Second Link: Kayla's Website