Room 16

This is Ben and Jackson's poem about Josef from the book 'Refugee'. Reading Refugee has made me a lot more aware about how bad Hitler was to the Jews. He had no mercy; he killed innocent kids who didn’t know much about the world. I am really grateful to not be in Germany at that time. If I was in Germany I would be really scared so I think Josef is extremely brave.

This is a poem and digital portrait about an Aboriginal girl living in Australia, 1931. Her name is Molly Craig. In this movie there is a family of Aboriginals, one mother and three girls, Molly, Daisy and Gracie. In this movie the little girls all get taken by the government to a camp where the other Australians get 'educated'. After a while, the girls escape from there and get back to their family. Many of these children never saw their parents again. I am very happy that I wasn't an Aboriginal kid in this time in Australia.

This is a picture of a Syrian refugee. In Syria there is a civil war that has left many citizens homeless. A book we read in class called “Refugee” inspired us to write about a Syrian refugee named Mahmoud. We found this interesting because of how hard the refugees work to escape their countries and how dangerous and difficult their journey was.

Our poem is about a left handed woman in the 1800’s compared to a left handed woman nowadays. In the 1800’s, left handed people, especially women, were accused of witchcraft and consorting with the devil. Many women were executed and/or tortured for their so called crimes. This topic was chosen because we feel that many people were wrongly accused and it is interesting to see how far society has come.

Our portrait is about a young girl in Ukraine who was shot in the face by a Russian soldier. We chose her because she was totally innocent and no one deserves to be shot in the face in the name of war. We think that she is very brave and it is a miracle that she is alive. Civilians being shot is a war crime.

Our digital portrait is of a refugee girl from Syria in 2012. In Syria there was war which caused lots of people to leave their home and become refugees. We chose this girl because we found her back story interesting and thought that other people should learn about her story too.

This poem is about a dark skinned person and a white person in the 1800s. In the 1800s America was racist and “black” people were discriminated against and were unable to live their lives normally e.g. dark skinned people weren't allowed to go to school with white people, weren't allowed to be on the same bus with white people or go to the movies with white people .The reason we chose this topic is because it was not that long ago that dark skinned people were treated like second class citizens.

Our inspiration for this came from the book ‘Refugee’. We wanted to show what it was like for Jewish people during World War 2. We wanted to compare their situation to that of a Nazi soldier to show the extreme differences in their lives. Jewish people were hunted down and the soldiers were Hitler’s hunters.

We chose this person because our poem is about a child in Ukraine during the war with Russia. This girl is five years old and does not feel safe so she has to hide away. This girl has lost many friends and family because in Ukraine at least two children die every day. This girl never got to go to school because the Ukraine soldiers used many of the schools as military bases.

Our poem is about a girl called Isabel from the book ‘Refugee’. She lived in Cuba in the year 1994. Isabel, her family and another family travelled from Havana, Cuba to Miami, on a small boat while her mother was about to have her baby brother. It was a treacherous journey in a small home-made boat. We chose Isabel because she suffered great hardship with her family on this journey but never lost hope.

Our portrait and 2 voice poem features a Syrian boy named Mahmoud from the book ‘Refugee’, who has been seeking asylum in other countries to escape from the civil war in Syria. We chose Mahmoud because we want to bring awareness to the harsh reality that they live in. From terrible living conditions to appalling acts of violence towards them, we think Syrian refugees deserve to be heard. Syrians must travel miles on foot, and get smuggled by boat because the countries on their border won’t accept them as citizens. They risk their lives, are forced to sleep in horrible environments, live in tent cities, and hide from police to reach a country that will take them in. Not all of Mahmoud’s family made it.

The reason why we chose Isabel from the book ‘Refugee’ and a teenager lining in New York, is because they both have very different lives and perspectives. Isabel escaped Cuba with her family and friends on a very small and unstable boat. They were on a very dangerous journey to find freedom in America and their safety was not guaranteed.

This poem and digital portrait is based on Mahmoud from the book ‘Refugee’. In the book, Mahmoud is a 12 year old boy living in Syria in 2015 when the war was forcing lots of Syrians had to leave their homes. I chose him for this project because in the book Mahmoud always has the drive to keep moving forward for the sake of him and his family. I felt like Mahmoud is very adult-like and mature for his age because even when his parents gave up, he kept going.

I made my portrait of Josef from the book ‘Refugee’ for my missing voice. My poem was about Josef from 'Refugee' and an average New Zealand student in 1938. I learned about what happened to Jews in Germany when Hitler was in power, and the Holocaust. I also learned about how the Nazis and Hitler got the Jews into concentration camps by using laws about what they can and can’t do. Josef was one of the many Jew refugees trying to leave Germany and Hitler. Hitler killed about 6 million Jews in the holocaust.