Number the Stars by Lindsey

Lindseyof Salt Lake City's entry into Varsity Tutor's July 2013 scholarship contest

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Lindsey of Salt Lake City, UT
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Number the Stars by Lindsey - July 2013 Scholarship Essay

From the moment I learned how to read, I was hooked.  As a kid, I spent my days reading The Great Illustrated Classics series, at times starting and finishing a book in one day.  I could spend hours a day reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Great Expectations, Little Women or Oliver Twist.  I distinctly remember the first non-classic book that I fell in love with, Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry.  My fifth grade teacher assigned the book to the entire class.  The story is told through the eyes of ten year old Annemarie Johansen, living in Nazi-occupied Denmark.  Annemarie’s family takes in her best friend, Ellen Rosen , to conceal Ellen’s Jewish identity from the Germans.  From a young girl’s perspective I learned about the Holocaust as well as the Danish Resistance, which helped to smuggle nearly the entire Jewish population to Sweden during German occupation.  
I believe the most intriguing aspect about the book to me was that I could really relate to the young girls.  This story was not set hundreds of years before my reading, but rather fifty years.  Their lives seemed much more modern, filled with some similar concerns as mine, yet included massive fears and anxiety completely foreign to me.  The book made me sad, but at the same time it made me incredibly grateful for the life that I had.  Number the Stars helped me put my life into perspective, as well as begin to understand the effects that prejudice can have on society as a whole.  Both the persecutors and the persecuted suffer at the hands of  intolerance.  Hearing about the success of the Danish Resistance during such trying times allowed me to see the strength resistance can have against intolerance, and its crucial place in history as well as in society today.

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