She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake. She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back. Sleepy air seemed to have followed her. The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder. They breathed. German and Jewish lungs. Markus Zusak
About This Quote

The poem “The Hidden Jew” is written by Jewish author, Hannah Arendt. Arendt was born into a Jewish family in Germany, she never knew her mother. Her father was a well known Jewish lawyer. From the age of four, Arendt was shunned by her peers because of her religion.

This led to isolation and loneliness for Arendt. The day her father died, Arendt left for France after being rebuked by friends who could not understand why she had to go to the funeral rather than staying home to grieve with them. Arendt went on to become a famous political philosopher and human rights activist.

She was also known as the principal investigator for the Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem in 1961. The poem “The Hidden Jew” is about Arendt’s experience of persecution. The poem is written in first person memory, which means that the narrator is remembering an event that happened to him or herself.

The poem is written in third person perspective, which means that it is describing an event that someone else has observed and recorded, not the narrator’s own experience or thoughts on the subject. The hidden Jew is also written in first person perspective, but it doesn’t directly reference events that the narrator experienced because he or she cannot be certain what happened at all times during his or her life history.

Source: The Book Thief

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