The Devil's Arithmetic

The plan to escape reflects the dire circumstances of Hannah and the Jewish prisoners and furthers the idea that they are under no illusions about what the Nazis have in store for them. They might avoid the terms, but they remain aware of the daily possibility of death. Yolen emphasizes the strict secrecy of the plan through imagery. Gitl creeps onto Hannah’s sleeping shelf and whispers it to her.

Gitl doesn’t tell Hannah the details, leaving both the reader and Hannah in the dark. It’s unclear what’s happening, and the lack of explicit information adds to the eerie, suspenseful tone. Yolen doesn’t say the plan fails right away. First, she uses imagery. It’s night, and Gitl and Hannah are on the way to dump when they hear shots and screams. Gitl whispers: “Quickly! It is ruined. Before the lights. Come” (142). Her dialogue confirms the unsuccessful escape.

Breuer further dehumanizes the Jewish prisoners when he tells them: “I see I have been too easy on you. I have made you into my pets. That is what they call you, you know: Breuer’s dirty little pets” (145). Breuer thinks of them as unclean animals—not people. Shmuel preserves his human identity and asserts his individuality and agency. He stands with his “chin thrust out defiantly” and spits (144). The spit reflects his contempt for the Nazis. The Nazis can kill him and the other men involved in the plan, but they can’t extinguish his soul. Fayge dies with Shmuel; the couple’s death adds to the drama and showcases their undying love.

Yolen uses imagery to juxtapose the beauty of nature with the horrors of the firing squad and life at the concentration camp:

It was as if all nature ignored what went on in the camp. There were brilliant sunsets and soft breezes. Around the commandant’s house, bright flowers were teased by the wind (148).

Nature is beyond the Nazi’s reach. The Nazis can’t kill its beauty, and its presence suggests that beauty and horror often coexist. Yolen personifies nature with the human ability to ignore one’s surroundings.

The images of nature also represent hope. After taking in the sights, Hannah tells Esther, Shifre, and Rivka another story. This time, Hannah revises her narrative. She leaves in the facts about the six million murdered Jewish individuals, but adds hopeful parts. She says: “In the end, in the future, there will be Jews still. And there will be Israel, a Jewish state, where there will be a Jewish president and a Jewish senate. And in America, Jewish movie stars” (149).

The girls remain doubtful, but Hannah insists. Rivka wonders: “How can you remember what has not happened yet?” (150). Her question reflects the novel’s bending of time and memory. Hannah’s memories are from the future because she went back in time. Thus, past and present switch. The past, 1942 and the Holocaust, becomes the present, and the future, the late 1980s in New York, becomes the past. Hannah’s memories give her knowledge about the future.

Hannah goes to the gas chamber for Rivka. She cements her place in the Jewish community and her sense of obligation toward others. She is ready to endure death for someone else. Like Shmuel, she faces death defiantly. She walks “purposefully, head high” (152). On the way toward death, she tells Shifre and Esther an uplifting story. She keeps her soul, humanity, and hope.

Aunt Eva complicates The Link Between Memory, Hope, and Personal Experience. She says: “We all changed our names. To forget. Remembering was too painful. But to forget was impossible” (156). Memories provide knowledge and identity, but they also generate pain and hardship. Suffering is a part of the human experience, and Eva and the other survivors can’t separate themselves from the calamity they endured. Hannah says: “I remember. Oh, I remember” (156). She now shoulders these memories too. Presumably, the firsthand remembrance gives her empathy and understanding. She knows what her aunt and grandparents had to confront.

Israel symbolizes a safe space for Jewish individuals. Gitl and Yitzchak move there. Gitl continues her dedication to the Jewish community with her organization.

Yolen reveals aspects of her personal life and shows the connection between her and Hannah. She demonstrates her knowledge of the Holocaust by citing the number of Jewish people killed at the concentration camps. She labels the death tolls “the Devil’s arithmetic indeed” (160). Yolen also names some of the other groups Nazis targeted.

Yolen says her reason for writing the novel is to be “that witness, that memory” and to show “the swallows still sing around the smokestacks” (161). In other words, Yolen’s story gives voice to the memory of the genocide and its victims. She believes beauty and hope are always around, even during something as horrendous as the Holocaust.