Marion Blumenthal's Four Perfect Pebbles

The Blumenthal family was only one of many who suffered from the holocaust, under the reign of Hitler. Marion Blumenthal was lucky to have survived with her family, but not without memories of the terrible suffering her and the rest of the jews in that time went through. The book, Four Perfect Pebbles was named after a past time game Marion would play to distract from the horror around her in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. She would search the grounds of the camp for four pebbles, each representing a member of her family, that were perfectly the same. She told herself that would be the sign that her family would stay together. Her brother, Albert would always tease her about it, but she was determined her family would survive the terrors of the holocaust from 1933 to 1945. At first, according to stories Marion’s mother told her, it started out slow. The Nazi party was small, and had no power. Over time, along with the leader of the nazis, Hitler, becoming Chancellor, it grew into something bigger than anyone would’ve imagined. Jewish boycotts took place, three year olds were waving Nazi flags, and children even ran through the streets and stoned Albert’s baby carriage. The …show more content…
The Nazi occupation of the Netherlands began. There would be no more ocean liners taking refugees to America anymore, so the Blumenthals, as said before, were truly trapped. Daily roll calls began, barbed-wire fences were put up, and Westerbork became a transit camp where more than 100,000 jews were sent to Auschwitz, in Poland. Auschwitz was called, “the death camp” and for good reason. Here was where many jews met death in gas chambers. They were given coffee and soap before getting to go to the shower rooms, thinking everything is fine, until they stepped into the shower and were met with Zyklon B, the gas used to kill them, instead of water. Luckily, the Blumenthals never had to experience