Short Essay On Looking Back By Mania Slainger

The primary source document Looking Back is a memoir by Mania Slainger. Salinger is a Polish Jew that experienced and witnessed the brutality of Nazi’s during WWII. She suffered a great deal of inhumanity. However, her education and ability to speak Germany helped her survive. In her memoir she speaks of the invasion by Nazi Germany, her stay in Radom ghetto, the Wsola labor camp, the Pioki labor camp, Auschwitz concentration camp, the Hindenburg manufacturing factory, and Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Her knowledge of the German language saved her from hard labor and possible death. In addition, she was graced with many people who helped her on her journey. This book is a testament of the endurance and perseverance of ones’ will to survive.

She was the middle child of three children. She had an older sister and younger brother. Her parents were very faithful and she was taught Jewish ethics from their example. Her and her siblings were told to strive for Mensch which is the practice of being a good, decent person. As discussed in class, this is an example of a “life tradition” Jewish practice, in which one does not look for answers in scripture but what one’s family’s practices illustrate. Salinger continues to speak about her child-/adolescent- years in Poland. She states the there was not much anti-Semitism that she saw, even know Poland was largely anti-Semitic. Salinger recalls, a restaurant across the street had a sign on the window which said “No dogs or Jews allowed”. In addition, she can only recall one event of personally being effected by an act of anti-Semitism, she applied for a public high school in Poland despite have high honors and good grades she was denied. The school met their quota of incoming Jewish students that term of two persons. However, while attending school she and other Jewish children were escorted out of the room, into the hallway, while morning prayer took place. While reading this chapter of her early life, it brought into question “was she so accustom to an anti-Sematic society that she did not pick up on more anti-Sematic sentiments brought against her, her family, and other Jewish people in her