No Pretty Pictures

Sweden represents the second major section in the book and a shift in atmosphere and environment. In the official Swedish building, Anita says, “I waited for commands, for shouting. There were none. Everyone was calm and quiet. Everything looked so clean” (122). There’s a juxtaposition between Poland and Sweden, with the former representing chaotic, unsanitary conditions and the latter symbolizing harmony and cleanliness. Despite her new safety, the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland stay with Anita. Although neither Lobel nor Anita uses this term, she appears to be coping with trauma. She suspects the Swedish caretakers could be Nazis subjecting her to horrible medical experiments. In the concentration camps, Nazi doctors used prisoners to test cures and theories, and the results were harrowing and deadly. Marina, symbolizing the role of caretaker, calms Anita, but her suspicions don’t vanish, so she forces the nurse to show her brother. Anita, too, symbolizes protection since she looks after her brother. Anita’s anxieties show the consequences of Constant Displacement and the Lack of Stability. The uncertainty and danger she has experienced cause her to feel unsettled and wary, even when the immediate danger is gone.

Anita continues to associate Christianity with safety. Anxieties aside, the Christian Swedish people keep her from harm. They’re not Catholic like Niania but Protestant. Anita says, “I soon discovered that Martin Luther was more important than the Holy Mother” (131). In 1517, Martin Luther, a German, publicly protested some of the Catholic Church’s questionable practices and created Protestantism. In The Destruction of European Jewry: Student Edition (1985), the historian Raul Hilberg connects Martin Luther to the scathing antisemitism of the Nazis. Luther called Jews, “a plague, a pestilence, pure misfortune in our country” (14). Despite these links, Anita continues to associate Judaism, not Christianity, with trouble and doesn’t want anything to do with it. In Sweden, she starts to create a new, positive identity. She states, “I now lived in bright colors” (134-35). The presence of the Jewish man threatens to return her to “the years of darkness and fear” (136). The Nazis made being Jewish dangerous and negative, and the man’s presence reminds Anita of that. Her visceral reaction to his stories might be a product of trauma and internalized antisemitism, so she unconsciously perpetuates the hateful Nazi propaganda of her childhood. At the same time, such a reading undercuts Lobel’s wish to avoid the victim label because it cleanses her of responsibility and takes away her agency. Anita is a thoughtful girl who teaches herself Swedish and reads a lot of books. While keeping her traumatic history in mind, it seems like Anita could temper her critiques of Judaism if she tried.

Herr Nillson represents a father figure, and Anita walks with him through Stockholm as she and her dad once walked through Krakow. Herr Nillson also symbolizes further displacement, though the movement isn’t so terrifying now. She’s not going from hiding spot to hiding spot or concentration camp to a concentration camp, but it’s unsettling nonetheless, and she doesn’t want to leave the hospital and go to the Polish shelter. After living in the hospital for a year, learning a new language, and making friends, uprooting means Anita will need to build her sense of identity and safety once more. Nillson also connects to the theme of The Body and Societal Identity. Anita feels uncomfortable in his home. It’s nice, and although Anita’s body is clean, her physical trauma in Poland haunts her. She’s “still fearing that shameful dirt would seep through” (144). She wishes she was a “doll or a puppet” (143), so doesn’t have to recalibrate her identity and body, and someone can force her to fit into Nillson’s “beautiful chair” and elegant home.

Anita’s trauma persists in the shelter for young Polish refugees. She thinks the shelter “could be another kind of concentration camp” (149), but the worry doesn’t gain much traction. Anita seems more upset with the phony goodbye from Herr Nillson, which circles back to the motifs of children versus adults and words versus actions. Anita is wary of what adults say and do. After Nillson says he hopes to see her again, Anita says, “He didn’t have to say that. He didn’t have to pretend that he had any need to see me again” (152). The mistrust of words carries over to her parents. It’s hard for her to think of them as anything “but two more official words” (152). This relates to the theme of The Body and Societal Identity, as Anita’s parents won’t feel real to her until they are physically reunited.