World War Two officially began in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. The Polish Army was quickly defeated. The man who I chose to write about was Shep Zitler. He was a Lithuanian Jew who lived in Vilna, Lithuanian. Vilna was a very popular religious town, and was known as the center of Eastern European Jewish culture. In February of 1939, Shep Zitler was drafted into the Polish Army. He was mistreated and discriminated against, mainly because the Polish people did not like the Jewish people any more than the Germans did.
Shep Zitler's unit fought bravely, but was eventually captured in September of 1939. His unit was sent to a prisoner of war labor camp. Shep Zitler was a prisoner of was for five years and seven months. He was sent around to various labor camps. AS a Jew, he was given the most menial and disgusting jobs. His life was often threatened, but he was afforded certain sanctions under the Geneva Convention. Zitler was liberated on April 22nd, 1945. He found out later on that most of his family had been killed. Shep made it to America on December 23rd, 1948.
Shep Zitler's story inspired me because of how incredibly lucky he was have survived the combat and labor camps during World War Two. I was also incredibly lucky to get into the Gateway to College program. My story of survival began back in November of 2008. My grandmother died, and the entire world suddenly crumbled around me. She was my entire support system, both in life and my education. When she died, I honestly did not know how I was going to make it through all of it. After my grandmother died, my performance in school began to fail. I started skipping classes, and fell so far behind I could not catch up. I dropped out of school February of this year. Once I came to terms with my grandmother's death, life began to gain back some of its meaning to me. I found out about the Gateway to College program, and my road to redemption began anew.
Here is a link to the website where I found Shep Zitler's story:
http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/
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ReplyDeleteGreat job on Blog #2 Chase! For revision, just be sure to include a link to your source for this post--it does not need to be in MLA format, because we had not gone over that in class whent this post was due. It is still important information to include for your reader, and it is nice for you to have in case you ever need to go back to your original source.
Thank you so much for sharing your survival story. It is so important that we find ways to relate to what we are reading--it helps us stay more focused and it allows us to grow as men and women both in and out of the classroom. You are doing such a wonderful job in Gateway to College and I see such a bright future for you. Your positive attitude in the classroom always brightens my day and makes my job as a teacher so rewarding:) Hang in there and know that you have a very special support team here at G2C that is all rooting for you!!
10/10: Thanks for revising Chase!
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