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"Finding Light in the Darkness" - Coggle Diagram
"Finding Light in the Darkness"
Krakow, Poland
Yanek's father is proud of who he is. "Let them take everything. They cannot take who
we are.
" Pg 11
Yanek's father tries to be positive. "We'll make do," my father said. "We were spoiled before anyway." Pg 11
Yanek going to get food with his father. "I was still worried he was wrong, but fresh bread made me forget all my troubles." Pg 25
Yanek's family finds a safe pigeon coop to live in. "Yes, Mina. We will fix up the coop and live here, and we will put bars on the door. Yanek and I will see to it." Pg 35
Yanek's parents are taken by the Nazis, but he decides to still stay strong and keep surviving. "My parents would not want that for me. In the place of my pain, I felt the stirring of determination. I would not give up." Pg 59
Yanek had his bar mitzvah, despite religious activity being banned in the ghetto. "Now we are ten men," my father whispered. He smiled at me. "And soon we shall be eleven." Pg 46
Plaszow Concentration Camp
Uncle Moshe finds Yanek in the camp. "But
you
are alive, boy! There is a blessing in that. You're the only other one of us to survive." Pg 69
Yanek was able to avoid Goeth with his job outside the camp. "I escaped the daily shooting gallery through my job at the tailor shop." Pg 73
Yanek finds the money that his mother sewed into his family's coats. "I'll buy us a little something to eat. You've saved us, Yanek!" Pg 80
Yanek finds a loose floorboard to hide in. "The gap in the boards would be wide enough for me to slide down inside, into the space between the floor and the ground." Pg 85
Wieliczka Salt Mine
Yanek finds statues made of salt in the mine that the miners before them had built. "After so many months and years of dirty streets and peeling paint, of gray uniforms and spartan barracks, it was astounding that there could still be beauty in the world." Pg 100
Trzebinia Concentration Camp
Yanek makes an oath to remember a boy that was slaughtered by the Nazis for no reason. "I kept my head held high and watched, vowing never to forget." Pg 112
Yanek puts his face up to the ventilation in the cramped cattle car, allowing him to breathe fresh air. Resourcefulness. "My heart still raced, but at least I could breathe."
Yanek eats some snow on the grate so that he doesn't die of thirst before they arrive to their destination. "It was water, wonderful water!"
Birkenau Concentration Camp
Yanek and the other prisoners were spared and rained on, rather than being killed with poisonous gas. "Water! Not gas! I was going to live!" Pg 129
Yanek decides to stand for a boy who is turning thirteen. "'We are alive,' I told him. 'We are alive, and that is all that matters. We cannot let them tear us from the pages of the world.'" Pg 135
Yanek still showered every morning to take care of himself, despite the fact that it was freezing. "I was alive, and I meant to stay that way."
Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Yanek made a friend in the camp, which made him feel less alone. "Fred and I became inseparable at camp. We stood together at roll call, we ate together, we tried to get on the same work details, we slept beside each other at night." Pg 160
Death March
Yanek is hopeful that the allies will be there soon to save the prisoners. "I was going to survive it all. I was going to be alive when the Allies liberated us. This I swore." Pg 168
Prisoners began to sing as they walked, and the Nazis didn't stop them. We sang as we walked, all of us, singing a hundred different song, and the Nazis let us sing." Pg 173
An old man helped Yanek carry another boy as they walked throughout the day, despite both of them not having much strength themselves. "It was a struggle to carry the boy, but with someone else to help I was rejuvenated."
Moonface helped Yanek by giving him some food, which surprised everybody. "Moonface had found it in his heart to be generous for once, but just this once." Pg 231
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Yanek motivates himself to keep going by telling himself that the Allies will come to free him soon. "Every swing meant survival, I told myself. Work to live. Live until the Allies come." Pg 192
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp
Yanek was able to recover for a week before being put back to work. "I hated to give up the delicious soup, but the bread sat better with me, and I slowly began to get stronger."
Yanek was able to channel all of his energy into winning a race to be transported into a new camp, away from a guard who torments him in Bergen-Belsen.
Buchenwald Concentration Camp
Yanek still showers every day, despite all that's happened and the fact that he is very tired. "One day as I was washing myself at the camp water pump, part of my daily ritual...." Pg 208
Dachau Concentration Camp
The Allies had finally come and were going to take care of Yanek and the other prisoners. "'Everything is going to be all right now, Yanek,' he told me, and for the first time in six years, I believed he was right."
Munich
Yanek went to Munich, and he found the remains of his family and neighbors who had survived as well." I had a family- a cousin still. Family. I wasn't alone."
Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp
After all these years in the concentration camps, Yanek still remains hopeful that he will be free soon, which keeps him motivated to continue on living. "That world existed, I knew. I couldn't reach it now, not yet, but soon. If I survived." Pg 215.