Letters at their end

Weekly writing 9/19

This week we read and analyzed last letters from the Holocaust and completed a think pair share activity to go over the two specific letters we chose to read from the Holocaust letters collection. Discussing our letters with partners was very interesting, not only to be able to talk about what I read and share my thoughts but also listen to how other letters may have sounded and what they included. One of my partner’s letters was particularly interesting, it was from a husband to a wife, a long letter urging her to help him with his confident escape plan from the camp which I thought was daring and fascinating. He also was giving her instructions and ways to help her get money and survive during this time of the war. Overall both of my partner’s letters contained a lot of confidence and strive, a sense of certainty that was evident in the tone and the contents of the letters. Those letters didn’t feel like the end, they felt like pure human hopefulness. My letters in contrast were filled with a bleakness, a sense of doom that the writer knew was coming. A goodbye was etched into every word, a detachedness that didn’t want to accept that death was coming but was sure that it was. All in all I thought it was so interesting to discuss these differences in the letters we read. And it was so eye opening to be able to see how different human perception of their life during this horrific time was and what they chose to include in the letters that in the back of their heads knew would be some of their last.