This is how Chapter 1 started off, this is the beginning of the book. I believe that this quote is almost telling us the plot of the book, or of what is taking place. The Germans Nazis have invaded Denmark and Lisa and her family are Jewish, this puts them in great danger of either being killed or sent off to concentration camps by the Nazis soldiers. “A giant bumblebee. It was buzzing in my ear; it was going to sting me.” I think this phrase is representing a German soldier and a Jew (Lisa). The Germans are running around Copenhagen, trying to find Jews and eventually sending them off to another country to put them in a concentration camp. The buzzing in her ear, practically, was a German soldier spotting Lisa and was about to shoot her. But because she was only dreaming, she snapped back to reality. Although the buzzing didn’t stop, because it was real life. The Germans are trying to get rid of all the Jews. “I opened my eyes and sat up with a start, but the buzzing didn’t stop.”

     Answer the following questions using point form. These questions are based on the events of chapters 1, 2, 3. The number of marks indicated for each question lets you know how many points of information you need.

Stefan:

Lisa's father is a doctor who works at the hospital, in chapter two, Lisa’s father faces the dilemma of having to treat the Nazis in the hospital. He doesn’t know if he wants to help them, because they are the people who are invading their country and killing harmless Jews. He starts venting but he knows the consequences, he could be sent to jail or shipped off to a concentration camp, just because he is Jewish. But Lisa had an idea, she insisted that her father continued to treat the Germans but at the same time treat them wrong. He will put them out of commission, he won’t kill them but instead will keep them in bed for as long as possible. As well, he will switch the medicine; Painkillers will be sleeping tablets, Headache pills will give them stomach aches. 

At the very end of Chapter two, Lisa realizes that her life is not going to be the same. It’s changing. Her family is Jewish, and she has a very big chance of being captured and taken away by the Nazi Germans. She realises the risks that her father is taking, and how much trouble he could be in if he gets caught. He could be killed along with Lisa and the rest of her family. 

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Liza and Stefan play “chicken” with the Nazi soldiers. 

The Resistance tells the Danes the real news of the war using leaflets. Someone is printing them out and dropping them around the city. This is done by the people apart of the Resistance.

Lisa is waiting anxiously for Stefan because she in waiting for the answer of if she is aloud to join the Resistance and fight back against the Nazis.

“If you don’t let me help,” I whisper to stefan, whom I've cornered in his room, “I’ll do it by myself.’

“How?” He looks at me and shakes his head, benevolent, condescending, smiling.

“How?” I say, ready for a fight. I’ll tell you how.” How, I think to myself desperately. “I’ll follow you, pick up one of the leaflets, make copies by hand at home, and give them out!”

I grin defiantly at him, sit back on the bed, and look as superior as I can.

The smile fades from his face. He looks at me thoughtfully. “You could get caught,” he says quietly, now deadly serious. “And anyway, you wouldn’t be very effective alone.”

“I know I wouldn’t” I explode—in a whisper. “But you have to let me help. Look, I’m not asking you to let me go on one of your secret missions.” Stefan looks at me in surprise. “Come on, I'm not blind,” I add. Or deaf, I think to myself. “I just want to do what I can. People should know the truth, what’s really happening. And I can help.”

“I’ll have to check it out first,” he replies. “They’ll ask you,” I say, “they’ll ask you, ‘Can she do it?’ What’ll you say? There’s an endless pause as he looks at me. I feel my whole life rests on what he says next. You always pretend you couldn’t care less what your stupid, overbearing brother thinks, but you care, all right.

“I’ll say that they can trust you. And,” he adds, breaking into a grin, “that you’re a good runner.” I start breathing again—no wonder I was getting dizzy—and give him a big bear hug that almost knocks him over.

“I hope,” he says, looking away from me, suddenly all embarrassed, “that I won’t regret this.”

“I won’t let you down, Stefan!”

“No, I know that,” he answers gently, “but I hope I’m not letting you down. Or Mother and Father. If they knew I was letting you get involved . . .”

“Don’t think that way, Stefan. I want to. It’s not you. I’d find some way to do it, with or without you.”

“All right,” he says. “Tomorrow, after supper, I’ll let you know.” 

The next morning Erik and I arrive at school to find barbed wire all around the school yard, and thin, scrawny, dirty men in prison uniforms silently gazing at us through the wire. Erik speaks to a couple of them, but they don’t answer, you can tell that they don’t understand hom. Then he asks where they’re from, but he can’t see, to find the right language. All we know is that they;re not Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, French or German. Erik has tried all those languages. Maybe Polish. They look terrible. 

All of a sudden I feel so fat and healthy. I take my lunch out of my book bag and pass the sandwich and apple through to one of the prisoners. He smiles. He has no teeth. I guess he’ll have to give the apple to someone else.

A guard sees us and yells at us to get away. We hurry to the entrance of the school, where Mrs. Jensen is waiting for us. 

“Everyone must go to Hellerup school,” she says.

“But it’s full already,” I say.

“School will only be every other day from now on,” she replies. “Now hurry, I’ll meet you there.” I say to Erik, “Well, it’s like what your dad said about the trains running on time—there are some good things about the Germans being here.” 

I was just kidding Erik, but for the first time since the invasion I can see he is genuinely upset. “You think that’s good, do you?” he says. “How can I keep my grades up without all my classes?” I stand still, thunderstruck. “You’re crazy, you know that?” I laugh, and we hurry over to Hellerup school. There are a million kids there, and everything is in utter chaos. I find Suanne, and we hang around together until Mrs. Jensen comes and show us to our new rooms. There are already kids in it, and we have to share desks. I pick out the cutest boy in the class and memorize where he sits.

“That’s my desk,” I whisper to Suanne. She giggles and picks the desk behind mine. Then Mrs. Jensen sends us home for the day with a ton of homework. I spend most of the day working and waiting for Stefan. I can hardly stand it. Finally he comes home just as we’re sitting down to eat. I keep trying to catch his eye, but he acts as if nothing special is happening. The second he goes into his room after supper, I’m in after him.

“Well?” I say. 

“Yes,” he says. I begin to go after him to give him another bear hug, but he fights me off. “Come on, have some pity,” he says. I sit down then, all smiles. “You volunteer to pick up the laundry,” he says. I groan. I’d rather be in a shout-out than have to drag all those bags back from the laundry. It’s at least two blocks away. “The laundry,” he repeats sternly. “Not the place we usually use, but the shop one block away, over on Praesteogade. It’s called Nansen’s Laundry. You go in at exactly three P.M. You ask for a Soren Sorensen’s clean laundry. They will give you a bag. It will be filled with underground newspapers. You get on the first streetcar you see and start to leave piles of them behind. Get off, get on another streetcar, and so on, until your bag is empty. Then go to our laundry and pick up Mother’s”.

“But how will I explain being gone for so long?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “You will figure it out.” It was just starting to sink in, what I was going to do. “How often do I do this?”

“Once every two weeks.”

“When do I start?”

“Friday.”

Defiantly: In a manner that shows open resistance or bold disobedience.

Overbearing: Unpleasantly or arrogantly domineering.  

World War 2:
Through much of World War II, Allied bombers would sometimes drop leaflets warning of impending bombing of a city. The leaflets often told civilians to evacuate, and sometimes encouraged them to push their leaders to surrender.

                The first day of the invasion was when I found out my country had surrendered. I was furious and I wanted to do something about it. So, I joined the Resistance. I was going to drop leaflets of information around town telling people what is happening to our country and what we are doing to fight back. Before I could really start, my sister found out, and begged me to let her help. Since then, she has been the one dropping leaflets in my town.

Sometimes I feel extremely guilty because my parents don’t know, and if they found out, I would be in a lot of trouble. Every two weeks, I send my sister to our local laundry to pick up the bag full of leaflets. Then she gets on a street car and leaves piles of them on the car when she gets off to do the same to the next one. The first time she went was a disaster, she was very close to being caught. There were two German soldiers in the street car with her and they kept eyeing her down, so she wasn’t able to leave a few of them behind. My sister got nervous, and wanted to get off at the next stop. But when she got off, the soldiers stood up as well and she threw up all over them! The soldiers were angry but luckily, there were people around and were able to protect my sister from any harm the soldiers could’ve done. When she got home and told me all of this, I could only laugh. I felt bad and all, but I couldn’t stop thinking about their faces! Now that I think of it, I put my sister in a lot of danger that day, and I still am! My family is Jewish, so I am sure the soldiers would do anything they can to throw us in a camp. I am truly puzzled, I am wondering if I should continue with sending her out every two weeks, or should I stop?

I have confusion and regrets racing through my mind. I really need some good advice right now,  I don’t want to lose my sister and my family. Please respond quickly. 

Sincerely, 

Bothered Brother

2. SS : The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz made up of party volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. - Wikipedia

Below you will find quotations from the novel Lisa’s War. For each quotation, you need to explain what the context is and why it is significant to the story. (20)

This is how Chapter 1 started off, this is the beginning of the book. I believe that this quote is almost telling us the plot of the book, or of what is taking place. The Germans Nazis have invaded Denmark and Lisa and her family are Jewish, this puts them in great danger of either being killed or sent off to concentration camps by the Nazis soldiers. “A giant bumblebee. It was buzzing in my ear; it was going to sting me.” I think this phrase is representing a German soldier and a Jew (Lisa). The Germans are running around Copenhagen, trying to find Jews and eventually sending them off to another country to put them in a concentration camp. The buzzing in her ear, practically, was a German soldier spotting Lisa and was about to shoot her. But because she was only dreaming, she snapped back to reality. Although the buzzing didn’t stop, because it was real life. The Germans are trying to get rid of all the Jews. “I opened my eyes and sat up with a start, but the buzzing didn’t stop.” 

This took place in Lisa’s first mission to drop off the leaflets by the Resistance on the street cars. She got so nervous that she threw up. The significance of this part of the book is that this is the first time Lisa has done this. This is when she officially joined the Resistance, this is when she did something to fight back. Lisa was younger at the time and very scared to even attempt to do anything like she did, but when she got older, she learned to control her stomach and is completing harder tasks. Lisa was scared, she knows she is Jewish and what the Germans would do to her if they found out what she was up to. She got herself worked up and her mind (and her stomach) eventually gave in. She didn’t believe in herself and was so scared of the soldiers. But when the people helped her out when the soldiers cornered her, her confidence grew, and she was ready to keep going because she knew people had her back. 

A chill runs down my spine. My God, I think, these Germans are dragging us all down to their level. How will we keep ourselves better than them?” (p.46)

This was Susanne speaking to Lisa after they had just blown up the factory, just like when Susanne’s parent’s dance hall got blown up when they were inside it. It is making Lisa anxious, she is starting to see that the Danes are getting angry and are starting to act like the Germans themselves. The Germans blew up the dance hall, and the Resistance blew up a factory. Everything is starting to go downhill, the Germans have been in Denmark for a while, and they are killing Jews freely. The Resistance thinks that destroying the things that the Germans may need (shoes, radio parts, etc.) is the best way of fighting back, but it is only making the Nazis angrier. And when Susanne says she is enjoying doing these types of things, putting her life and her friend’s life at risk, risking getting caught and possibly killed, makes Lisa wonder if they are any better then the Germans. 

Lisa is angry, she is mad that she is treated differently because of her looks and her heritage. She is still a human being and the Nazis are treating her and the other Jews like they are imposters. When Lisa is around her friends and other people she is treated equally, just like how she treats her friends. Now she will only be known as and called a Jew, and she realises that that is now the only important thing about her. It’s the thing Germans are tracking down, taking them away from their families or being killed on the spot. It makes Lisa feel sick that being a Jew means having your life at risk constantly, it makes her wonder why she is so special just because she is a Jew. 

I almost laugh. The rabbi going on holiday on Rosh Hashanah?

Then it hits me.” (p.62)

This is when Lisa realises that the rabbi isn’t going on holiday on Rosh Hashanah, but instead he is getting away from the plans of the German Nazis that will be taking place on New Years. Lisa knows the bad things that can take place at the synagogue, because there would be a lot of Jews all in the same place at the same time, the soldiers can either take them and ship them off to concentration camps or kill them. Now that Lisa found out this information, she is calling as many Jewish Danes as possible to tell them about the situation. She is trying to round everyone up so all can escape at the same time.