"The Shawl" was a very depressing yet realistic tale of the conditions which victims of the Holocaust lived in back in the earlier 1900s. I have always found the Holocaust to be one of the most interesting subject in history. The amount of power and support Hitler had gained by blaming people of different races, specifically members of the Jewish community, was substanstial. Germany was at its lowest, poorest state ever, and Hitler seen the opportunity to brainwash the desperate and starving people of Germany. There were things I liked and disliked about the story. Obviously I disliked the situation these victims were in, especially the innocent baby in this story. I did like the reality of this story, I think this story did a really amazing job of allowing the reader to visualize and understand Rosa's thought process such as when she was describing how she wish she could hand her baby off to an innocent bystander. My main reason for liking the story is because of how well I think it captured the situation the family was in even though no words could entirely capture what these innocent people were going through. The details in the story were very weary, the way the writer talked about how thin they were and their emaciated bodys being light as if there feet were not touching the ground. Rosa described how she was aware and superparanoid about people eating Magda, even stella. Stella stole Madga's shawl which triggered Madgas death in a sense although the chances of her surviving were nonexistant. People become a lot less like people when they are not treated as such. It is amazing the extremes someone would have to be pushed to in order to eat a 14 month old baby. I liked the part of the story that described Madgas eyes as tiger's eyes. Her pure eyes were innocent and constantly observing her surroundings. I thought the fact that Madge was so malnurioushed and underdeveloped that she was usually mute was tragic. Rosa hid, protected, and tried to feed her baby from her soar, cracked, dried out nipples. Rosa did everything in her power, which wasn't much, to keep her baby alive and hidden from guards. When I was reading the story, I knew that Madga was going to die; however, I didn't expect her to be thrown by a guard into an electrified fence. The most depressing part about the holocaust, was the animilistic was in which is caused the nazis(supporters of the holocaust) and even the victims themselves, to act.