Between two stories by Jona

Between two stories by Jona - May 2017 Scholarship Essay

Reading has always been my passion and I randomly selected “Sarah’s Key” one Saturday morning at the bookstore, without knowing for what was about. This book has influenced my life. I read it for the first time when I was only 15. More I read it more it was appeared in my eyes the story of my family. I was living between two stories: Sarah’s story – the Jews persecuted girl, and the story of my great grandfather who experienced the same situation as Sarah’s parents. Both stories are joint in one point. It’s about the terrible events that lead to painful circumstances of the World War 2 of 1842 – The Jews and other people’s persecution from different individuals with heatless actions. Exploring more in depth of the labyrinth of those events, I was terribly scared by the cruelty of persecution. I realized how much those people have suffered and how frightened the wars are.
Sarah Starzynski was the main character and the symbol of Jewish suffering. Well-articulated by the author, she came to me alive. When my grandfather told me for the past of his father, still I couldn’t understand how these things would happened in world. He showed me an antique watch that his father gave him one day when he was only 14 years old. He gave him his watch and told him to take care of his mother and other sisters and brothers with promising that he will come back soon. But he never came back again and my grandfather always lived only with memories, his portrait, and the old watch. My great grandfather was announced “Honor of the Country” in Austria in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp memorial where easily can be found his name. My family’s story has always inspired me to write about these painful events, and what I found at this book was the similarity I have with the journalist that decided to discover and write about Sarah Starzynski’s life.
This parallelism of events and characters has always motivated me to search more about this part of history – I can define them as painful and tragic events especially for the survivors and the family members of victims. The Nazi plan to disappear Jews has touched all the Europe. They were persecuted and terrorized in a cruel way. 6 million Jews are killed, 1.5 million were children. Those concentration camps exterminated used unhuman methods. Jews tried to escape, to fight, to call for help all around Europe. One of the most countries that contributed in their help was Albania, my origin country. Even that I am grown up in United States, together with me always live the memories of my family. Sarah’s Key will always be for me a precious book. The key – that she always had it with her with the hope that one day she would come back to save her brother locked on that closed, symbolize for me the watch that my grandfather held with the hope that her father one day would come back, even that the scratches stopped forever. My goal is that one day to visit that place in Austria and to write a reportage about this story – in the honor of my great grandfather and Sarah Starzynski, that fast thinking young girl. She demonstrates her love for her brother and was willing to risk her own life to keep her promise to come back for him.