|Name: _________________________||Period: ___________________|
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. How is Golda, the red-haired girl Ernie rescues from the Nazi bullies, deformed?
2. What does Herschel Grynszpan do that affects all Jews in Germany?
3. In his wedding dream, what shows up at the windows?
4. In the hospital, what does Ernie pray to God to do?
5. What is Vernichtungswissenschaft?
Short Essay Questions
1. Why are the old men of The Association of Zemyock surprised that Ernie has returned to them?
2. What causes Mordecai to take up a weapon against the Nazi perpetrators?
3. What details alert Ernie to the fact that the passengers will never leave this place?
4. What changes does Madame Trochu make when she understands that Ernie is a Jew?
5. What were the Jews told to take with them into the "Baths and Inhalations"?
6. Where did the Nazis tell the Jews they were going in the boxcars?
7. Why does Mordecai say it would be useless to leave Germany?
8. What does Ernie say to comfort the children in the boxcar?
9. What part does the music of the band play in the successful extermination of the Jews?
10. What surprising request does Ernie make of the gendarmes at Drancy?
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
The author spends a large part of the book establishing a genealogy for Ernie that places him as the last of the Just Men. In your essay, select some of Ernie's ancestors and explain how the characteristics they demonstrated in their lifetimes are apparent in his actions.
Essay Topic 2
Schwarz-Bart includes a number of characters who represent wide segments of society in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. In your essay, select two or three characters such as the nurse in the infirmary, the farmer's wife, the young Galician, or Herr Geek and explain what purpose they serve in presenting the reader with a panoramic viewpoint of the culture at that time.
Essay Topic 3
The setting of this story is very specific, yet nothing is mentioned in this story of the rationale for hatred and mistreatment of the Jews in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. What reasoning enabled Germans and others to believe that Jews should properly be exported or exterminated? Using Internet research for your essay, explain the societal elements that allowed such an idea as the Final Solution to come into existence in an educated, civilized society.
This section contains 842 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page)