Student Book Review
Letters from Rifka, by Karen Hess
posted by Ms. Beth Keyser | 6:42 PM
Eighth Grade Holocaust Unit
Through our research from the United States Holocaust Museum Website, Voices of the Holocaust and many other non-fiction books about the holocaust, students will attempt to answer the following questions: How did the Holocaust happen in the first place? How were the victims persecuted? What was the resistance to the Nazis during the holocaust? Why should we remember the holocaust? Who was responsible for the holocaust?
About Me
- Name: Ms. Beth Keyser
- Location: Superior, Montana, United States
I teach Language Arts to seventh and eighth graders
6 Comments:
I think the theme of "Letters from Rifka" is that it something might be scary or difficult but the rewards afterwards are worth it.
Like when Rifka got ringworm she had to suffer going through in a strange place without her parents but afterwards she got a clear bill of health and was able to sail over to America and meet Peter, one of the sailors on the boat.
Another example is when she got typhus she had the chance of dieing and never going to America but she persevered and didn’t die.
Michele Reinelt
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"Letters from Rifka" is about never giving up on your dreams. For example when Rifka gets typhus, she works and works to get better. Then when she gets the ringworm and is not allowed into America. Living in Belgium she learns three languages, she is very clever. When she finally reaches Ellis Island she teaches the little Russian boy to read the Pushkin, and helps many of the nurses there in the hospital. While there she learns English. At the end of the book she finally makes it into America.
well Michele I agree with you compleatly. Another example would be when Petir, her first love, dies. She is so strong and "clever."
Kelsie Ray
Roman said...
This book expands the idea that most of the Jews were persecuted in Poland by the Nazis. ten years before world war 2 the USSR, and Poland were picking on the Jews. Rifka is a Ukrainian Jew. and i am Ukrainian, and I know that the Russians thought Ukrainians were walking piles of crap so a Ukrainian Jew was like a walking pile of crap that you dropped your car keys in. this book describes how if you hold onto your pride no one can take it even though every seems to hate you for no reason.
Kelsie said...
I bealive that the (or one) of the themes is that you don't have to be beautful to make it. Like how in the end of the book she dosen't have any hair but she gets into America. Purly on her talent for writing.
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