¨This is the beginning of the end,”everyone was saying but Churchill, the British Prime Minister, who had probably heard the same thing in England, said: ¨This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.¨ - The Diary of Anne Frank, p. 47
This shows me that the Jewish people did not have a lot of hope. They knew it was the end. At first I was a little confused with this quote, I didn't really see the difference. What everyone else was saying was that the pain and suffering has just begun. What Winston Churchill was saying was that their joy and their old life are now ending. This quote is important because it was when the people of Germany realized that from that point on things will be different. It just depends on the way you look at things.
I can connect this quote to the theme hopelessness. People were very hopeless. This is how Jewish people felt during the Holocaust also. They knew things were going to change for worse. This quote also reminds me of when its your birthday and some people say ¨It’s the end of your childhood¨ it reminds me of what Churchill was saying because he was saying the good is over and this is saying your childhood is over. Others say ¨It’s the first day of the rest of your life.¨ This is what everyone else was saying instead of saying that the normal is ending, there saying that the change has just started. All of these quotes mean the same thing they´re just said differently. Which would you say?
Hmmm, good question! You did a great job of relating Churchill's quote and the thoughts of the time to your own life and to current times. So what would I say? I'm an optimist so I'm one of those people that would say "It's the first day of the rest of your life" when it comes to typical things. I may have tried to be that way with regard to my life if I was Jewish and had to live like Anne did, but I'm sure the hopelessness they felt would have threatened to take over me, especially if I lost my family. Once that was gone that would be the end of my ability to fight the hopelessness, unless maybe someone else's child was depending on me. So then I would have agreed with Churchill and viewed it as the end of joy and happiness.
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