Judith Rothenberg [Annotator's Note: a Belgian civilian who was a young child when the war broke out] is interested in telling her story, particularly to teenagers, because they do not understand why Jews did not just leave their homes before the war. The men knew immediately that they were at risk once Germany occupied the territory [Annotator's Note: Belgium], but no one ever thought that women and children were in danger. When the Germans first came [Annotator's Note: the German occupation of Belgium began on 28 May 1940], Belgian Jews had already learned from German Jews of Kristallnacht [Annotator's Note: Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's paramilitary forces – the Sturmabteilung (SA) – along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9-10 November 1938]. In addition, Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] also wrote about it, so they knew right away that they were definitely in danger. Still, no one ever thought that women and children would be put into concentration camps. By 1940-1941, there was no longer any escape because the Germans were occupying all of Europe. Rothenberg listened to Churchill's [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945] voice on the radio in a basement and had hope that the British would come and save them. One of Rothenberg's first memories is being in the basement standing on boxes and her mother holding her up to look at the North Sea, which was completely red. After hearing the noise of bombardment, she asked how the water could be so red. Her mother explained that it was the oil from the ships that sank. [Annotator's Note: telephone rings, break in the interview].

Judith Rothenberg was born in Antwerp [Annotator's Note: Antwerp, Belgium], and later moved to Brussels [Annotator's Note: Brussels, Belgium]. If born in Antwerp, one immediately learns three languages: Flemish, French, and most also learned either German or Yiddish if they were Jewish. Rothenberg's first recollection is of her father taking her to school when she was three or four years old. She was very proud because her mother had put a beautiful yellow star [Annotator's Note: Jewish badges, Judenstern, worn on the clothes of Jews in Nazi Germany] on her coat, which she thought was decoration. Her father also wore a star on his jacket, and she was matching her dad. She also noticed that some of her neighbors were wearing a star, but she did not know that it was a bad thing. Rather, she thought it was pretty because it was yellow, and she loved yellow. When they arrived at the school, the teacher, who was kind and had a sweet voice, told her father that Jews were not allowed to attend school. On the way home, they stopped at her favorite chocolate store on Vestingstraat [Annotator's Note: the name of a street in Antwerp], but they would not let them in because they were wearing the yellow star. Rothenberg looked at her father and asked why she looked so sad but would not sell it to them. Her father explained that it was because they were Jews. Rothenberg asked a friend who lived next door what Jews are. The friend said that Jews are bad people, had big noses, and were dirty. Rothenberg immediately ran home and asked her mother to give her a bath. She told her friend, Rolande [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] that she was now clean but Rolande responded that "Jew" was written on her nose. She believed for years that something was written on her nose and always tried to hide it. Six years later, after surviving the war, Rothenberg told Rolande that she had been hiding her nose because of her comments, to which she responded that that was stupid of her. Rolande never understood what she had done. When Rolande's mother had heard what she told Rothenberg, the mother apologized on her behalf. Rothenberg's family was the only family to survive and return to the neighborhood.

Judith Rothenberg's [Annotator's Note: a Belgian Jewish child at the time of the war] recalls her father left them [Annotator's Note: departing from Antwerp, Belgium]. She accepted his departure because all of her friends' fathers had also left by then. The Germans had sent out a letter inviting the men to go and work in the factories for the Fatherland [Annotator's Note: name the Germans called their homeland]. These were factories such as Mercedes [Annotator's Note: Mercedes-Benz automobile company] or BMW [Annotator's Note: Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, or Bavarian Motor Works vehicle manufacturer]. The men had no choice as they were not allowed to work elsewhere. Jews were not allowed to go into restaurants, so even waiters could not work, because they were Jews. Some men took their families with them, but those are the ones you never heard from again. France Libre [Annotator's Note: Free France; government-in-exile after the fall of France to the Germans] or Vichy France [Annotator's Note: French government that collaborated with the Nazis], were their only option as England and Switzerland were closed. Rothenberg's father looked like the Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] should look - very tall, very blonde, always had a crewcut and spoke perfect German, and this saved him in the war. He had learned to be very sure of himself, and he had the right looks. Rothenberg's sister does not want to remember anything from this time because the memories are much too difficult for her. For Rothenberg on the other hand, the memories are an adventure that she is able to talk about since all she remembers was her mother always smiling down at her, and her sister teasing her, so she never realized that anything was wrong. As long as her mother and sister were smiling, she was okay. Her mother bought her a yellow coat on which was the yellow star [Annotator's Note: Jewish badges, Judenstern, worn on the clothes of Jews in Nazi Germany] which Rothenberg liked, because she always liked matching things. But her mother cut off the star. A man came to get them when it was dark. She was frightened because one thing she knew was that there was a curfew and that they were not allowed outside after dark. Her mother reassured her that it was okay to be outside, since she was not wearing the Jewish star. They went to a train station with this man who she later learned was a friend of her father who had two boys. On their passports, he changed the boys' names to girls' names. One of his boys was named Claude which is both a girl's and boy's name. The father changed the passport pictures. Rothenberg's last memory before falling asleep on the train was seeing young men with bayonets sitting in the train leaning on their bayonets [Annotator's Note: she mimics how they were sitting]. Her mother later told her that that night when they arrived at the border between Belgium and France, the conductor came and asked for their papers but could not wake up Rothenberg. This was very good as she only spoke to her mother Yiddish. Her mother said she was her child, Claude, and that she was not Jewish. Rothenberg cannot remember her father's friend's name but heard later that he was shot for smuggling Jews. The conductor kept waving his lantern, trying to wake her up without touching her. Her mother actually wet her pants because she was so terrified. The conductor turned to the young soldiers and asked if Rothenberg was Jewish. He must have been told that she had yelled Mommy [Annotator's Note: in Yiddish]. None of the soldiers answered him. Her mother always said that this was the biggest miracle. [Annotator's Note: the telephone rings, the interview is interrupted]. The biggest miracle that happened to our family is that those young German soldiers did not respond to the conductor.

Judith Rothenberg [Annotator's Note: a Belgian Jewish child at the time of the war] arrived in Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] with her mother and sister. She was wearing a yellow coat with a velvet collar and a beret. Much later, Rothenberg's mother was a bit vain. When her sister asked her why she would say such a thing, Rothenberg recounted being in Paris and her mother forbidding her from taking off her coat when she got warm, which she believed was because mother would rather look good than for Rothenberg to be comfortable. Her sister called her an idiot and explained that the reason their mother did this is because they had been wearing all of their clothes so as not to need to carry a suitcase which would make them stand out, and they needed to blend in. They took a horse-drawn carriage from the Gare du Nord [Annotator's Note: French train station] to the Gare du Sud [Annotator's Note: French train station] because there was no gasoline or taxis. She later learned from her sister that in Paris on 17 July 1942, 100,000 Jewish citizens were rounded up and 90% never came back. They had been in the city that day. Later they walked through woods, with only women and children. They played a game of who could hide the fastest and collect blackberries whenever they heard airplanes overheard to keep the children occupied. They arrived in a town where there was a kind gendarme [Annotator's Note: armed police officer in France] who greeted them all. The gendarme welcomed them to Free France [Annotator's Note: Free France; government-in-exile after the fall of France to the Germans], and everyone hugged. The gendarme told them everything would be okay, but that they needed to register. Rothenberg's mother called her father who was in Nice [Annotator's Note: Nice, France] at the time to let them know where they were but refused his offer to come and get them. They slept on the floor one night, with pillows all over the place. As day was breaking, she heard someone yelling her mother's name. It turned out to be her father. Her mother was very embarrassed. He led them to a milk truck hid them in the back. It had been announced that the Jews would be collected from that village that very day. In Free France they were deporting the Jews to to Bergen-Belsen [Annotator's Note: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Bergen, Germany] and other concentration camps.

Judith Rothenberg [Annotator's Note: a Belgian Jewish child at the time of the war] arrived in Marseilles [Annotator's Note: Marseilles, France] with her mother, father, and sister. They were not allowed to go on trains because they would be asked for papers. One day her father sent them to a movie house where they watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [Annotator's Note: an American film produced in 1937], which Rothenberg found so terrifying it made her scream. Her mother would cover her mouth because she was screaming in Yiddish. They took a car from Marseilles to Nice [Annotator's Note: Nice, France], to an apartment where her uncle and cousins were already hiding. Rothenberg did not realize that they were all hiding, she thought it was a family celebration because she could only see everything from a child's point of view. As an adult, she goes back to Nice or Cannes [Annotator's Note: Cannes, France] and unwanted memories come to her all of a sudden and she feels fear. Nice was not a good place for Jews in 1942 as the French – not Germans or Italians – were rounding up Jews. It [Annotator's Note: the apartment where they were hiding] was on a street a few blocks from the Hotel Negresco, where there was a big factory. Every night they would sit on the terrace, and Rothenberg would watch her neighbors quietly walking by without realizing that that would be the last time she would see them, as they were being all sent to concentration camps. Each night she saw about 20 to 30 families quietly being taken by the French. The Germans and the Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] were not there at the time that she knew of. Her father, who was the only one who felt safe to be seen, used to take her for walks. They would walk in front of their hotel, and he would tell Rothenberg to go into the cafe and see if she could count any boots, which she did not understand until many years later. Her father later explained that only the Gestapo would wear suits with boots. Her father became friends with Madame de Rothschild [Annotator's Note: Élisabeth de Rothschild, née Pelletier de Chambure]. It was considered safe to be friends with her because she was married to a non-Jew. They had two daughters her sister's age. Rothenberg's father asked Rothschild for help getting her and her sister on a boat that would be leaving from Marseilles to go to America on which some Jewish children were allowed to depart. Rothschild promised their father that she would get Rothenberg and her sister onto the boat. Her parents found a smuggler to help them get to Barcelona [Annotator's Note: Barcelona, Spain], where the boat was going to stop, in order to say goodbye to their children. The only way to get there was to walk through the Pyrenees [Annotator's Note: a mountain range that separates Spain and France]. Basques [Annotator's Note: a Southwestern European ethnic group] guided them through. They missed the boat and watched it depart. Rothschild had several American friends. She brought Rothenberg and her sister back to her villa. It became less important that she was married to a non-Jew, because her name alone makes it clear to the German authorities that she is Jewish. Although she did not practice Judaism, a month later she was walking like any other poor person through the Pyrenees. Rothschild had to figure out what to do with the two girls. At the time, there were only two options for escaping France: go to Spain where Franco [Annotator's Note: Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain from 1939-1975] was in power, or to Switzerland which not open, so you would have to be smuggled into Switzerland. Switzerland did eventually let Jews in, but put them into camps, they were not free. The Swiss are not the nicest people, but money counts. She does not remember the name of the ship they traveled on, but it arrived in Massachusetts, not in New York, because Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] did not allow immigration. The arriving children were adopted by American families. Many ended up in Framingham [Annotator's Note: Framingham, Massachusetts] and Newton [Annotator's Note: Newton, Massachusetts] and had normal lives. Some of them did get back their parents later on. When you are not with your parents for three years, it is easy to forget them.

Judith Rothenberg [Annotator's Note: a Belgian Jewish child who escaped to the south of France with her parents and sister] was put into an orphanage with her sister and one of her cousins. The cousin's parents did not take him with them because they knew that travel through the Alps [Annotator's Note: mountain range in Europe] was too hard for a child, and that the orphanage was very safe. It only took in a certain number of Jewish children and the rest were French orphans, which meant that the authorities did not know which children were Jewish or not. They did not accept boys, however, because they were circumcised and therefore identifiable as Jewish. The proprietors of the orphanage promised Rothschild [Annotator's Note: Élisabeth de Rothschild, née Pelletier de Chambure who was helping the children] that the children would not be converted by priests and nuns. Rothenberg later took her husband to visit the orphanage in Cannes [Annotator's Note: Cannes, France], which was not easy to find because the French did not even know that it existed. There was also a beautiful villa owned by an American who offered up the villa only if it would help to save the lives of Jewish children. The children were given a piece of French bread with chocolate stuffed inside every day. They often ate rutabaga, a word which kills her to this day. The orphanage did not have bread. The proprietor of the orphanage, Madame Fort [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] was a heroine because she did not know what she was doing, and Rothenberg and her sister did not appreciate it at the time. All they knew was that they were hungry. Children are not able to see the big picture. They hate the person in front of them who cannot feed them, they do not hate the person ultimately responsible, so they hated Madame and Monsieur Fort. Rothenberg often pretended to have a cough because she would be given a cough medicine which had a sweet taste, and she would put it on bread, a delightful moment. Papa Louie taught her which grasses were edible, some tasted like onion. He also taught her not to eat green dates, but she did not listen, ate them anyway, and got very sick. At this point, her father and mother had a horrific trip, almost losing their lives walking over the mountains [Annotator's note: the Pyrenees mountains separating France and Spain] to get to Barcelona [Annotator's Note: Barcelona, Spain] to say goodbye to their children who, they believed, were going to be safe in America [Annotator's Note: Rothschild had promised to put the two girls on a ship departing Marseilles, France for the United States, but they missed its departure]. Her mother told her it had been snowing, that they fell, and her father refused to get up because it was more comfortable to be frozen than to go on. [Annotator's Note: the telephone rings]. They arrived in Barcelona, as did the ship. Waiting at the port, they learn that their daughters did not make it aboard. Her mother collapsed, and her father went berserk. He would walk the streets of Barcelona every day trying to find out what had happened to the little girls that did not make it aboard the ship. One day he ran into Madame de Rothschild on the street. At this time there was no communication, no telephones, letters or even photographs to show of his daughters because they had gotten rid of everything from their past. He grabbed and shook Rothschild, so much so that people came to help her, but she said it was okay. She told him which orphanage she had put them in in Cannes. Her father then found a smuggler to bring the girls to Spain. The first smuggler arrived. Her sister was at school, but Rothenberg was not allowed to because she talked too much. On her first day, she saw everybody having a sandwich and she grabbed one from another student. She was five or six years old. She said to the child that you are supposed to share food, and the little girl did not know what to do. The teacher seemed confused as to why Rothenberg did not have a sandwich. The orphanage was afraid that she would start talking [Annotator's Note: and speaking Yiddish]. The next day, the same little girl came with an extra sandwich for Rothenberg because her parents must have understood that she was hungry. When she recounted this to Papa Louie, she was forbidden from returning to school because it became dangerous that she might give them away.

Judith Rothenberg [Annotator's Note: a Belgian Jewish child who escaped to the south of France with her parents and sister] and her sister were visiting the villa [Annotator's Note: a villa in Cannes, France owned by an American man who offered it up to help save Jewish children], when a man [Annotator's Note: a smuggler hired by her father] arrived and was looking for a girl named Lily, her sister. He told Lily that he was supposed to bring her to her father. She said that she did not have a father, that she and her sister are orphans. She grabbed Rothenberg and took her back into the villa, where they hid. The Germans were there in the city trying to find Jewish children. They had found many children who were hiding in convents and sent them to concentration camp or ghettos. The smuggler returned to Barcelona [Annotator's Note: Barcelona, Spain] which her father later said was the saddest and the happiest day of their lives, because they knew their daughters were alive. He gathered jewelry, wedding bands, and gold teeth and gathered enough money to pay the smuggler to go back to Cannes. At this time it was late 1943, and they knew that the Americans were coming. She saw Americans like Clark Gable [Annotator's Note: US Army Major William Clark Gable, American film actor] as heroes. Winston Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945] was seen as a god, as was Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States]. Stalin [Annotator's Note: Joseph Stalin; General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] was not mentioned too often, but they knew that Stalin was one of the three. Being a little girl, Rothenberg did not understand their political significance, but only that they were very important. The smuggler returned and told them information that only her sister and their father would have known, so they went with him. Rothenberg had sores all over her body from malnutrition, mostly on her legs and feet, so she could not wear shoes. They put bandages around her and shaved her hair because of lice. They were taken to a house in the Pyrenees mountains where a woman took care of them and cleaned her sores. The smuggler then took the girls through the Pyrenees which were covered in snow, to a lake. He pointed out a bridge to her sister, where there were German soldiers who changed guard at a certain time. When that happened, they were instructed to run over the frozen lake to a barn. When the guards changed, they got to the barn where they slept on straw. A woman came to get them the next morning and took them to the police station in Spain. When they arrived at the police station, Lily explained that they are there to find their parents. When asked her religion, she said they had no religion. Spaniards did not understand not having a religion as they are very Catholic. A man behind them gestured for them to be quiet. The policemen did not know what to do with the girls. The police sent them to a hotel. Later, a man came to talk to Lily, who looked very upset. A few days later a woman came. She said she was from the Polish consulate and took them on the train to Barcelona. Rothenberg saw her parents walking up and down looking for them. Rothenberg felt strangely that she had no connection to them because she only cared about her sister at this point. When her mother grabbed and kissed her, Rothenberg kept looking at her sister to see if that was okay. Later on when she learned psychology, she realized that she had already learned to defend herself from missing people and being sad. Lily was the most important human being and her connection to safety.

Judith Rothenberg [Annotator's Note: a Belgian Jewish child who had escaped to the south of France and then Barcelona, Spain with her parents and sister, Lily] was taken to her parents' apartment in Barcelona where they waited for a boat to South America. One day, her father came, and he said that there was a boat leaving for Palestine. It was a Greek ship, but she does not remember the name. The reason that they were allowed to go to Palestine through the Mediterranean was because the British did not know where it was mined [Annotator's Note: areas where mines, stationary explosive devices triggered by physical contact are under the water], so it was a test. At this point the war was almost over near the end of 1944. They arrived in Palestine. She did not know how dangerous the trip had been. Her parents only told her later, and that the Greek captain of the ship was a hero. The ship was completely packed. She laid on the deck where her mother had made a corner for her so that she could sleep. They arrived in Haifa [Annotator's Note: now Haifa, Israel] in Palestine. When they landed, Ben-Gurion [Annotator's Note: Ben-Gurion, David, 1886-1973, first Prime Minister of Israel] and Golda Meir [Annotator's Note: the fourth prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974] and Weizmann [Annotator's Note: Chaim Azriel Weizmann, president of Israel from 1949-1952], important Zionists of the time were there. Their boat was the first to arrive carrying Jewish immigrants and survivors. Rothenberg was so happy because she believed Santa Claus was there. She later realized he was an Orthodox Jew with a white beard. When he heard that the girl thought he was Santa Claus, he gave her a piece of chocolate. Rothenberg and her family ended up living in Palestine. For a while the British were there. Her sister was sent to a kibbutz [Annotator's Note: community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture] called Ben Shemen, and Rothenberg went to a different one. The authorities there did not know what to do since all of a sudden large number of immigrants, including many children, had begun to arrive. Many of the children were brought by American soldiers to Jewish agencies, because otherwise they would have all been converted eventually, or been taken in by non-Jewish families. Since the community had just lost 6 million Jews [Annotator's Note: from the Holocaust, also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2], it became very important, so American and British soldiers set out to find Jewish children and send them to Palestine. In Palestine, many different languages were spoken: Polish, Czechoslovakian, French, Dutch, etc. The only common language that they remembered was Yiddish, which the Israelis – or rather Palestinians since they were not yet called Israelis – would not allow them to speak because it would remind them of the Holocaust. They hoped to start a new fighting generation. Rothenberg is often asked why they [Annotator's Note: European Jews] revolt. She explains that they did not have weapons but did revolt such as in the Warsaw Ghetto [Annotator's Note: In the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Jews violently revolted against Nazi Germany's sending them to death camps.] There was no place to run: American closed its doors, it was impossible to get to England, there was only a little hope in Spain, the Swiss only opened in 1943 which was late. You could not hide; you would always be found. Neighbors would betray you so they could take your apartment. Lifelong friends were afraid to hide you because if they got caught, they would be shot. They had nothing to fight with, and no place to run. Many who did revolt were hung in the middle of squares. Rothenberg remembers seeing two bodies hanging in a city square. In Palestine, it was different. They were trying to instill power and pride into the children who arrived there and taught them Hebrew. Rothenberg and her family decided to go back to Belgium because her father got very sick in Israel.

Judith Rothenberg [Annotator's Note: A Belgian Jewish child who had escaped to France, Spain, and Palestine with her family during the war] and her family returned to Belgium. She reconnected with some of her friends who were also survivors. She got a letter from her friend, Molly, in 1945 that simply said "Je suis vivante", meaning "I'm alive". She burst out crying and felt ashamed, but her mother explained that sometimes you cry because you are happy. Molly is now very happy and married, and they all ended up being okay. Some of their older sisters, however, did not. Lily [Annotator's Note: her older sister] was fine, although she has an angry edge when they talk about their wartime experience. Lily had to basically become a mother, taking responsibility for a small child and protecting her from danger. A few years ago [Annotator's Note: a few years before the interview] Rothenberg visited Cannes [Annotator's Note: Cannes, France] and Nice [Annotator's Note: Nice, France] with her husband. When she saw the steps up to the boardwalk, she began to cry all of a sudden because she saw herself hiding beneath the steps with her sister. She called her sister and asked what the significance of the steps was. Lily told her they had once had to hide beneath them. Memories jump at you, all of a sudden. Once in Belgium, showing her daughter the house she had lived in, Rothenberg began crying because she realized that the was the only who survived and was able to share her stories with her daughter, the only witness remaining from that whole street. When she and her sister reconnected with their parents in Barcelona [Annotator's Note: Rothenberg and her sister were smuggled over the Pyrenees mountains into Barcelona, Spain from Cannes, France to rejoin their parents], it had been two years since they had last seen each other. A psychologist friend once told Rothenberg that it was wrong of her mother to have always been smiling at her, because she was never able to understand the gravity of their situation, and she should have been told the reality. It took her many years to realize the danger they had been in. Her sister does not want her to remember many things. Lily has more memories of people who did not survive than Rothenberg does. Their father was the one who had to save people, as his looks helped him [Annotator's Note he looked German]. He saved her cousin from a hospital by pretending to be a Gestapo officer [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] there to arrest him. They only found this out when her father died, and people came to his funeral. During his memorial, there were two men who told her about when her father had escaped Belgium. They were on his train which was stopped at the border, and they knew that this was the end for them. This was around 1941 or 1942. Two of the men took out their tallits [Annotator's Note: a fringed garment worn as a prayer shawl by religious Jews] and started praying. Supposedly, her father ran down the train and yelled in German, performed the Nazi salute, and yelled for the train to get going again, pretending that he was taking the men somewhere and threatened to report the commandant to Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. The train continued and they jumped off en route. The men said that her father, Kubal Kaufte [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] saved their lives. Rothenberg resents when people ask why the Jews did not revolt because they did revolt, but they had no place to go. They were not morally beaten. A man is only beaten when he loses his whole family. In talking to survivors of Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland] and Bergen-Belsen [Annotator's Note: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Bergen, Germany], they survived only because they hoped to eventually find a member of their family. They would only give up when they began to believe that everyone was gone. Rothenberg asked her cousin how he survived Auschwitz for two years and he said that he remembered his brother was somewhere and would need him, so he had a reason to survive. Her mother lost six brothers and sisters [Annotator's Note: in the Holocaust, also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2]. Rothenberg once asked her mother to sing to her, but she refused saying that she would never sing again after losing her brothers and sisters. Rothenberg's father found one of his sisters in Israel – he had 14 brothers and sisters – and his baby brother survived Auschwitz and became extremely Orthodox, which they did not understand because many Jews turned against God, not understanding how He could allow such things to happen. It shows how some people react differently to tragedy.