‘Chaim A. Kaplan, a teacher from the Warsaw Ghetto said, “Ghetto life does not flow-rather it is stagnant and frozen. Around us - are walls! We have no space, we have no freedom of movement and action.” What is the main feeling that emerges from hearing this passage? Explain. (Echoes and Reflections)’
I think that hope emerges from this passage. Without hope, you don’t have a will to escape from the ghettos. The people (Jews; homosexuals; Sinti and Roma, or Gypsies; Jehovah’s Witnesses) who were put into the ghettos by Nazis were crammed into them. A lot of people from targeted groups wanted to get out, a couple hundred to a thousand escaped from each ghetto, and never came back. So I think more people had the hope to get out, but never got out because they got killed, caught, etc.
Also I think that a need to escape emerges from this passage because, like Kaplan said, “We have no space, we have no freedom of movement and action.” I think that the people that were in ghettos want to get out of the Ghetto, so they have space for movement and action, because the Ghetto is too small for all the people that were crammed in there by the Nazis. “Very little time was generally allotted for moving into the ghettos. Jewish families who in some cases had lived in their homes for decades had to gather their belongings and find shelter in a fenced-off area and was extremely crowded.”- Echoes and Reflections, PG: 139. This shows that people really didn’t very much room. Not a lot of room meant that most likely there were two or three families to a room or apartment, maybe even more families. Also families didn’t have enough space to live and do their daily routine.
So I think that there were many reasons that people wanted to escape, than hope to get out and having a need to escape. Other things that I can think of that the targeted groups wanted to get out. Like having no food and starving, or being treated badly enough to where they can’t handle it. I think that a lot of people didn’t have a will to escape that wanted to, mainly because they thought it was useless to. So in conclusion, people really didn’t like it in the ghettos, and had many reasons to escape from them.
I agree there were many reasons why people wanted to escape but they were too afraid and too weak to do much of anything. they most likely wanted to escape but couldn't so they might have just help others that had the power to escape, escape.
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