Daniel's Story

“What has happened to me? I feel just like I did when I was around ten years old and I got hit by a soccer ball right between the eyes and I wandered around the field disoriented, not knowing who I was, where I was, where I should be going.”

The opening quote introduces the themes of Lost Innocence and Dehumanization and Genocide. Daniel compares the disorienting childhood incident to the Nazi policy of deadly displacement. The quote features repetition—it repeats “I” several times, as if Daniel is trying to hold onto his identity as a person.

“The three of us laughed and joked about it, but as I lay in bed that night, I knew that none of us had found it fun—or funny. We were separate now from everyone else in Frankfurt. Separate and somehow less important.”

After the fight with the Hitler Youth boys, Daniel and his friends try to laugh it off, as if it’s a harmless juvenile incident. Yet they’re not so innocent. They realize the fight represents a serious threat to their safety. Daniel uses a blunt tone to tell the reader that the Jews are isolated and depicted as inferior.

“Friedrich and I made a pact that we would photograph everything we could as a record of our ill treatment by our fellow Germans.”

While still in Frankfurt, Daniel sees photography as a symbol of evidence. He and his cousin promise to take pictures of the brutal antisemitism as a form of documentation. Already, Daniel is gathering proof and preparing for a trial.