Four Perfect Pebbles
Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan
The WarTime
Marion Blumenthal was three years old when her and her Jewish family were first imprisoned by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Marion along with her mother Ruth Blumenthal, her father Walter Blumenthal, and her older brother Albert Blumenthal. The family visited many refugee, transit, and prison camps including Westerbrork in The Netherlands and the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in Germany. While staying in Bergen-Belsen many prisoners had lice and or died from typhus. Marion, Albert, Ruth, and Walter were imprisoned for six and half years, from 1939-1945. Bergen-Belsen was the last camp for Marion, Albert, and Ruth.Walter died while working in Bergen-Belsen. When it was liberated by British Troops on April 15, 1945, the three were not there. Six days earlier, they had boarded a train on its way to the dreaded Auschwitz extermination camp. But, on the two week trip, Russian troops liberated the train. Now as a grown women Marion Blumenthal Lazan shares her story of her childhood in the book Four Perfect Pebbles.
Jewish Children in Camps
http://www.flickr.com/photos/government_press_office/6377346635/
Inside a Concentration Camp
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/158062263/
Map of Germany
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Germany_map.gif
Vocabulary
The Holocaust was the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
A concentration camp is a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents.
Typhus is an acute, infectious disease caused by several species of Rickettsia, transmitted by lice and fleas, and characterized by acute prostration, headache, and a peculiar eruption of reddish spots on the body.
Liberated means to set free, as from imprisonment or bondage.
The Netherlands is a Dutch speaking county in West Europe also known as Holland, bordering on the North Sea, Germany, and Belgium.
After The War