Rescuers- Agnieszka Budna-Widerschal story reflection (page 175-179)

The story of a woman named Agnieszka was very disturbing to me. She seemed to me like any other rescuer in the time of the Holocaust. She was hiding a jewish family and others in her attic of her apartment. This was very risky since her "nosy neighbors" were living on the second and first floor. She took out their waste at night and brought them water when her neighbors were sleeping so no one would notice or become suspicious. She had to make up plenty of lies and stories in her confrontations with the Nazis. Im surprised that she managed to keep them straight and that she was still able to remain un-compromised.

What was ultimately disturbing to me in her story is that hate and anti-semitism that was still arising after the war. She describes a moment at the market, a woman confronts her and says "Only jews have money to by food. Look at what you can buy; I can't buy nearly that much." She replied a very sarcastic and rude comment. Its really shocking to me that people were still categorizing people based on the stereotype of "money". It was so hateful and discriminatory. Her tragic moment of hate was when her own daughter was murdered by polish kids. Agnieszka tells the interviewer that he daughter did not come home from school on day, and a conductor at the train station saw the polish children put Agnieszka's daughter Bella in front of an oncoming train. Even at the funeral, the mother of the children at the train station says "You know, its a good thing that our children are alive." As if Bella'd death did not matter to her.

It's appalling the amount of hate people had towards another human being in this time of the world. Its still appalling to me know that hate still continues as people discriminate against each other in our own country today, as if we can not learn from the Holocaust and what the hate did to the people in that time period.