Motherly Love

Anna Lacy
Trauma
January 27, 2014

Motherly Love

Being a mother in a concentration camp during the holocaust means having to not only take care

 of yourself but also having to take care of your child who is unable to care for themselves. Having to

 deal with the loss of a child in this type of situations i more than enough to push a person to the

breaking point mentally. In the article Days and Memories by Charlotte Delbo, she recounts a young

gypsy mother who was in the concentration camp with her and was so mentally broken up that her

baby died that she carried the body around and cared for it as if the child were still alive. The gypsy

mother was so heart broken by the death of her baby that she would rather be beaten to death with a

club than give up the child's corpse. On the other hand in Cynthia Ozick's tale The Shawl, a young

mother was marched to a concentration camp with her two daughters, one 14 and the other a few

months old. She was forced to keep her youngest daughter a secret and was successful until the 14

year old took a shawl which pacified the child and kept her quiet. The young infant cried out for the

shawl which drew the attention of the guards. The child, exhausted, grabbed the electric fence to

stead herself and ended up being electrocuted to death. The mother witnessed the death of her

youngest child while on the way to bring her the shawl to quiet her. The mother was then forced to

resist the urge to run to the aid of her child in order to avoid being shot.

The account of the mother willing to die for her already deceased child by Delbo, seems more

heartfelt and portrays honest motherly love pushed to the breaking point than in Ozick's story. Parts

of Ozick's story are unclear and scattered which make sound like a first hand account but when

compared to Delbo's account the flaws come to light. Delbo's account is not scattered and details a

clear. She included small details like what she is wearing or the smells which are not mentioned in

Ozick's story. The sincerity of the mother in Ozick's story appear false and the entire story comes

across as a well researched story made up of multiple first hand accounts.