No Pretty Pictures

The Polish shelter represents another shift in atmosphere. As with Judaism, Poland comes to represent something substandard or negative to Anita. She doesn’t think highly of her lessons, she puts down the “rough country faces” (154), and she connects the shelter to death due to the story of the boy falling into the pond. At the same time, Anita’s fascination with death remains strong. She brings the boy’s final moments to life by imagining his “screams for help [and] dripping, frozen body” (156).

About Ryfka, Anita says, “I avoided her as much as possible” (157). Jews continue to symbolize adversity for Anita. Ryfka’s outcast status manifests in how the other children tease her, and Anita seems bothered that Ryfka doesn’t stand up to the bullying. Ryfka’s resignation alludes to fraught discussions about the Holocaust and perceptions that Jews didn’t resist or fight back. In Notes From the Warsaw Ghetto, the Polish historian and Warsaw prisoner Emanuel Ringelblum wonders, “Why did we allow ourselves to be led like sheep to slaughter? Why did everything come so easy to the enemy?” (Ringelblum, Emanuel. Notes From the Warsaw Ghetto. Translated by Jacob Sloan, Schocken Books, 1947, p. 310). At the same time, the conception of Jews as passive only tells part of the story; many resisted deportation and led uprisings within ghettos and concentration camps. Two famous examples are the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the revolt in Treblinka that same year. Ryfka endures mistreatment because she is anticipating a brighter future in Palestine, alluding to the way hope perseveres even in the darkest times.

About Ryfka, Anita wonders, “Why had I not tried to be nicer to her?” (162). She doesn’t answer the question; in keeping with her flighty, stream-of-consciousness style, she moves on. The lack of answers might frustrate the reader. At the same time, Anita’s non-reply reinforces the “lack of pretty pictures” idea. As with Anita’s preference for Christianity and dislike of Judaism, there is no neat answer. Anita was mean to Ryfka, and no amount of analysis or reflection can change that. Here, Lobel strengthens her commitment to depicting her personal history as it happened, including her less-than-proud moments.

Anita continues to interact with Niania and her parents through letters, so for Anita, they exist as words and not bodies. Niania stays away from Sweden, but Anita’s parents come, so they become more than words, reinforcing the theme of The Body and Societal Identity. Anita doesn’t comment much about her mom since they haven’t been separated that long, and her mom continues to represent an antagonist figure. She wants to change Anita’s looks and cut her hair, although Anita associates short hair with being a prisoner. Cultivating an appearance that differs from how she looked in the concentration camp is a way for Anita to embody her new identity. As Anita hasn’t seen her dad in seven years, she focuses on him. The presence of his body brings back his identity; Anita says, “His smell was familiar and nice” (159).

As Anita and her family settle in Stockholm, Anita continues to create an identity in contrast to Judaism and Polish people. She admires Miss Lowengard while the Polish people and her mom criticize her. Ultimately, Anita longs for safety and stability and chooses the aspects she thinks will provide that: a good student, artist, and Christian. Anita’s dad has trouble accepting a working-class identity, and his behavior at the department store advances Anita’s linking of Judaism with negativity. She says, “Why did he have to betray me by becoming an old Jewish peddler?” (167).

The death of Niania takes away Anita’s symbolic protector. Her affection for the doll Niania sent her allows her to play the caretaker role as Niania did. Anita cares for the doll the way Niania cared for her in Poland. Niania’s death also brings out Anita’s harsh, willful side. She yells at her brother, then blames herself, then blames her parents. Her parents get her to stop wearing her Catholic medals, but Anita remains averse to Judaism. She doesn’t go to the temple, yet she sings in a church choir, and the latter brings her positive feelings.

The Epilogue brings back the adult Lobel narrator. Due to her brother, she knows information that Anita didn’t. As if unraveling a mystery, Lobel fills the reader in on the work the people around her did to keep her and her brother alive. Although Niania comes across as a protective symbol throughout the book, Anita’s Jewish family members helped protect her too. With this, Anita’s childhood aversion to Judaism after World War II is cast as a product of imperfect information; she believed that being Jewish endangered her, but her Jewish relatives and community worked to keep her safe throughout the Holocaust. This underlines how prejudice often persists due to ignorance and suggests that education is a step toward eliminating prejudice.

Finally, Lobel mentions Yad Vashem, Israel’s sprawling Holocaust center, which alludes to the link between Israel and the Holocaust—the modern state of Israel was created in 1948. The center also relates to the “documentaries and debates and memorials and countless heartbreaking accounts” (188) about the Holocaust, and Lobel establishes her narrative as part of this larger body of testimonies about the Holocaust. She compares this body of knowledge to the preserved concentration camps, which she considers “tourist attractions” (189). Lobel’s measured tone and aversion to the victim label suggest that she is wary of contributing to a sensationalized concept of the Holocaust. She asks, “In the end, what is there to say?” (190). In the end, she doesn’t try to universalize her suffering or turn it into a lesson about humanity; she refrains from imposing meaning on her suffering. She finishes by saying, “Mine is only another story” (190); she’s just another person, and she tells about her suffering as truthfully as possible.