All But My Life Journal 2 Matthew Joyce

After reading the second part of the book, I realized that I knew very little about the Holocaust and the hardships that the Jews had to go through. All I knew was that the Nazis killed many innocent people. I had no clue the lengths that the Nazis would go to persecute Jews. The Nazis took all of the rights from Gerda and her family. I was surprised by how many concentration camps and places Gerda was brought to. Before reading this book, I had never heard of a death march. When the Allies came closer to Gerda’s camp she was forced to go on a death march. I believe that the death marches were one of the worst things that happened in the Holocaust. Another thing that I knew little about were the stars that Gerda and all the other Jewish people were forced to wear. Gerda was forced to wear 3 stars as identification to show she was Jewish. While reading the book, I was very happy to see the person that helped Gerda most of all was Kurt Klein. I learned many things from this book that will stay with me for the rest of my life.