No Pretty Pictures

Lobel’s opening sentence, “I was born in Krakow, Poland. In a wrong place at a wrong time” (xi), does a lot of work. It alludes to the theme of Suffering and Its Elusive Meaning, sets the tone for the book, and brings in historical context. The voices are frank; neither adult Lobel nor child Anita sentimentalizes their situation. Rather than casting about for meaning in suffering, Lobel simply situates her trauma in its historical context. The Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Although Nazi Germany invaded and annexed territory before then, they did so with international acquiescence. Foreign nations didn’t approve of the invasion of Poland, so, again, the world was at war. In The Third Reich at War, Richard J. Evans tells how Germany unceasingly bombed Poland and planned to replace Polish people, regardless of their religion, with Germans (Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich at War. Penguin, 2008). Anita lived through a brutal war, genocide, and deadly prejudice against Polish and Jewish people.

Before jumping back in time, Lobel tells about her personal life and career as an accomplished illustrator of children’s books in a conversational, relaxed tone. The reader gets to know her as she is now before they learn how she was as a child. The Prologue also helps the reader get used to Lobel’s writing style. She can be fragmented—jumping from present to past without much warning. In leaping from thought to thought, forward and backward in time, the jumpy structure links to the theme of Constant Displacement and the Lack of Stability. To survive the Nazis, Anita and her brother had to move around between cities, guardians, and even identities in the case of Anita’s brother pretending to be her sister. The book’s nonlinear, fragmented structure unsettles the reader, paralleling the fear and uncertainty of Anita’s childhood.

Lobel uses juxtaposition to compare children and adult Holocaust survivors. She believes children weren’t “capable of knowing and feeling that which was torn from them” (xii) and admits that she didn’t process the “horrors and terrible losses” (xii) until much later. The tension between children and adults becomes a key motif or idea in the story that supports the theme of Constant Displacement and the Lack of Stability, as the differences in their perceptions of the same events cause a disconnect.

Lobel considers comparing her childhood to a nicer one but then drops the thought; somewhat defensively, she notes it’s “wearisome as well as dangerous to cloak and sanctify oneself with the pride of victimhood” (xiii). She doesn’t want the reader to feel sorry for her or to excuse her faults because she’s a Holocaust survivor. She says, “I have spent many, many more years living well” (xiii), so the Holocaust and the suffering it caused don’t define her. In stating that she doesn’t want the Holocaust to define her, the reader might wonder why Lobel is writing about her suffering. Lobel is vague on this account but states that people have asked her to write her story. Regardless, Lobel doesn’t want her story glamorized. She states, “I have very few pretty pictures to remember” (xiii), and the memories belong to her, so the reader shouldn’t expect a narrative that encompasses multiple experiences or a detailed history of World War II and the Holocaust. This is a personal story, and to write it, Lobel “reached to a time when everything in the world I lived in was being trampled on and destroyed” (xiii). It’s as if she goes back and becomes child Anita, so there are two narrators: The adult Lobel in the Prologue and Epilogue and the child Anita in the two main sections.

Anita’s story starts in September 1939, when the Nazis invaded. She uses imagery to create a picture of the German soldiers, and the vivid words help the reader see their synched marching and glistening boots. Anita juxtaposes the menacing Nazis with a pleasant, hopeful atmosphere, referencing a “warm and beautiful day” and “music and promise in the air” (2). These memories subvert Lobel’s claim that she doesn’t have pretty pictures to remember: Anita still sees beauty and potential in the world. In the book’s early pages, Anita introduces Niania, her nanny, setting up another juxtaposition of words versus actions. When Niania sees their Hasidic neighbor rushing by the window, Niania’s anti-Jewish sentiments come out. Anita writes, “‘Jews!’ I would hear Niania mutter” (3). Yet Niania dedicates her life to Anita and her family. Niania says things that are antisemitic (a term neither Anita nor Lobel uses), but Niania constantly moves with and protects Anita and her family, which suggests otherwise. Here, Lobel rejects a typical black-and-white view of morality, something that comes up frequently in World War II narratives, and suggests that most people are nuanced and imperfect rather than wholly good or evil. Niania’s antisemitic statements are not concealed, but they also do not define her, suggesting that her actions speak louder than her words.

Like adult Lobel, child Anita has an impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness narrative style. The memory of her Hasidic neighbor flows to the impression of her dad. She uses imagery to detail how he prays each morning. As Anita is five, she doesn’t know the proper terms, so she relies on vivid descriptions. The “black leather straps” and “small square box” (3) are Tefillin. They contain Torah verses, and Jews wear them to pray each morning. Her dad owns a chocolate factory, indicating that he’s successful and has something to lose. Anita then says, “one morning, he was gone and didn’t come back” (3). The shift in tone is jarring and mirrors the experience of suddenly having no dad around. The dead body in the courtyard reinforces the precarious atmosphere, and the memory of the motorcycle accident reminds the reader of the danger in everyday life for Anita and other Jews.

The Nazis come to Anita’s apartment with their guns “politely pointed at the ceiling” (5). The tone here is ironic, linking the Nazis to courteous behavior when they aren’t courteous at all. Along with the threat of violence—a gun is a lethal symbol no matter where it’s pointed—they take almost all of the valuable things from Anita’s home, as the Nazis tended to plunder and rob the countries they invaded. Anita remembers her first Passover Seder with adults, where there were lots of things. Here, she juxtaposes her present with the past through the presence of items and their loss. Through her childhood perspective, she associates material goods, not spirituality, with Judaism.

Anita questions her mom about her dad, so the motif of children versus adults appears. Anita can’t tell if her mom tells her the truth. Her mom’s fake papers link to the theme of The Body and Societal Identity. The false documents say she’s not Jewish, so she doesn’t have to identify as a Jew and wear a yellow star on her clothing. The Nazis forced Jews to wear the star to shame, fetishize, and endanger them. Anita hears terms like “deported,” “liquidation,” and “transported.” As Nazis didn’t want to be explicit about their genocidal aims, they used code words that made it seem like they were just moving Jews around or disposing of excess merchandise. Despite using obfuscatory language, Anita’s mom’s tears indicate that it wasn’t hard to catch on to the deadly meaning. The deportation of Anita’s grandma—her mom’s mom—makes Anita think of her grandma’s cold sore, and the image highlights Anita’s attraction to grotesque things and bodily functions. In Lapanow, Anita’s fascination with death and the body continues. She focuses on the dead fish, the beheaded chicken, and how she pops the boils on her legs.

The departure of the two servant girls links to the theme of Constant Displacement and the Lack of Stability and shows how any kind of relationship with a Jew, during this time, is risky. Yet Niania shows her loyalty by not leaving. The contradictions between Niania’s words and actions heighten; Niania’s anti-Jewish attitude becomes almost comical as she utters antisemitic things, takes them back, and then says them again. This motif of words versus actions is emphasized because ultimately, it’s not Niania’s outbursts that endanger Anita but her family when they ask her to hide matzo in her doll carriage. The scene deepens Anita’s perception that Niania represents safety and protection, while her family symbolizes peril. Lobel paints a precarious atmosphere with descriptions of boxcars and the stationmaster’s ominous code words, but Anita continues to equate Niania with protection. In Niania’s house, Anita says, “I felt safe” (26).

The search for food reveals how hard it is for Polish people to find food during the war. As the Nazis thought little of Polish people, they didn’t put much effort into feeding them. In The Third Reich at War, Evans says, “Hunger lead to a deterioration of social relations” (63), captured in the degrading interaction with the woman who dumps a chamber pot on Anita and her brother’s heads. The incident gives Niania a chance to show off her brash voice and Anita the opportunity to depict bodily functions.

Anita’s mom and family continue to symbolize danger, foreshadowing a later turn for Anita when she equates Judaism with danger and Christianity with safety. About her mother’s sudden appearance in Niania’s village, Anita writes, “No one had bothered us. Mother’s arrival changed all that. I looked very much like my mother. I was marked” (37). Anita’s mom refastens her to her Jewish identity, displaces them again, and compels them to sneak into the ghetto to be with her family. Being a child, Anita perceives the fear and discomfort in the ghetto but doesn’t understand the emotional strength her mother seeks in enduring trauma with her family. As such, she perceives her mother’s attempts at protection negatively. Niania, by contrast, tells Anita, “I will not abandon you. I swear on the Sacred Heart that I will come for you” (40).