All But My Life (SparkNotes Literature Guide)

By SparkNotes

All But My Life (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by Gerda Weissmann Klein
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• Language: English
• Publisher: SparkNotes
• Release date: Aug 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781411471412

Book preview

Cover of SparkNotes Guide to All But My Life by SparkNotes Editors

All But My Life

Gerda Weissmann Klein

© 2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing

This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7141-2

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Contents

Context

Plot Overview

Character List

Analysis of Major Characters

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Important Quotations Explained

Key Facts

Context

All But My Life is Gerda Weissmann Klein’s memoir of her experiences during World War II. Klein was born on May 8, 1924, in Bielitz (now Bielsko), Poland. She remembers her childhood as being happy, even idyllic. The Weissmanns were a Jewish family, and their town had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1919. Like most of the residents in the area, the Weissmann family was bilingual, speaking both Polish and German, and Klein’s older brother, Arthur, studied English as well. Klein’s father, Julius, was a business executive who had lived in Bielitz for more than twenty years, and Helene, her mother, was born there, as were both Klein and Arthur. The family was horrified when German Nazi forces invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Despite the fact that Britain and the United States declared war on Germany two days later, it took the Nazis only eighteen days to conquer Poland.

Soon afterward, the entire Jewish population of Bielitz was forced to register with the police, and soon, sanctions were imposed against the Jews. First, they were required to turn in all gold, automobiles, bicycles, and radios. Many Jews were forced out of their homes, and the local temple was burned down. In October of 1939, all Jewish men between the ages of sixteen and fifty were forced to register, whereupon they were sent in cattle cars to rebuild parts of Poland that had been destroyed by Allied attacks. Klein’s