Page 208 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade8_Flipbook

Making Thematic Connections
aCTIvITy 3.4
learning Target
• Analyze an excerpt from an autobiographical narrative and a poem.
• Compare the themes of two literary texts in a formal collaborative discussion.
Preview
In this activity, you will read a passage from a memoir and a poem and compare their themes.
Setting a Purpose for Reading
• As you read the passage, underline words and phrases that describe how Moishe changed after returning to Sighet.
• Circle unknown words and phrases. Try to determine the meaning of the words by using context clues, word parts, or a dictionary.
My Notes
About the Author
Elie Wiesel (1928–) was a teenager in 1944 when he and his whole family were taken from their home to the Auschwitz concentration camp and then to Buchenwald. Wiesel wrote his internationally acclaimed memoir Night about his experiences in the camps. In addition to writing many other books, Wiesel became an activist who spoke out about injustices in many countries around the world. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
Memoir
from Night by Elie Wiesel
1 AND THEN, one day all foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet.1 And Moishe the Beadle2 was a foreigner.
2 Crammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian police, they cried
silently. Standing on the station platform, we too were crying. The train disappeared over the horizon; all that was left was thick, dirty smoke.
3 Behind me, someone said, sighing, “What do you expect? That’s war ...”
4 The deportees were quickly forgotten. A few days after they left, it was rumored
that they were in Galicia,3 working, and even that they were content with their fate.
1 Sighet: a town in Romania
2 Beadle: a minor church official; a caretaker of a synagogue
3 Galicia: a former province of Austria, now in parts of Poland and Ukraine
Unit 3 • The Challenge to Make a Difference 181
LearNING STraTeGIeS:
Choral Reading, Rereading, Close Reading, Questioning the Text, Visualizing, Marking the Text, Discussion Groups
deportees: people forced to leave a country by an authority
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