Pat McGee
4/4/17
LIT Holocaust
Professor Sternberg
Tzili and The Story of a Life
I really enjoyed reading the novels Tzili and The Story of a Life written by Aharon
Appelfeld. The events that occurred in Tzili that was published in 1983 was very similar to The
Story of a Life, yet the two stories are also very different at times. Aharon Appelfeld did a very
good job writing Tzili by creating a female character known as Tzili Kraus and writing about
how she survived in hiding from the Nazis and then emigrated from Europe to British Mandate
Palestine before the State of Israel was formally established. Tzili goes through many ups and
downs surviving the Holocaust and making her way hiding from the Nazis and finally after a
while it ended and she was a survivor of the Holocaust and Concertation Camps. Tzili goes
through some difficulties the same as Aharon in Story of a Life.
In the novel Tzili Aharon Appelfeld creates a character named Tzili who is the youngest
and dull witted from a large Jewish demanding family called the Krauses. The family was very
poor and was always harassed and Tzili grew up neglected from her family and many others. Her
father was an invalid and her mother was contently busy all day in their little shop. She was a
very nice girl but was very dumb and unlearned. She was left alone to survive by herself when
her family decides to leave because the Nazis were coming. Later on Tzili flees from her house
and runs into the forest calling herself the daughter of the local whore named Maria to whoever
asks her who she is. Telling people she was Marias daughter gave her temporary security and
survival and a place to stay to hide from the Nazis. Tzili rooms with a former prostitute named
Katerina who terrorizes her because of her own memories of lost beauty and sexuality. Later on
Tzili meets a concentration camp escapee named Mark who she ends up falling in love with and
getting pregnant with his baby. Mark was her protector and was the main source of them
surviving by providing things to trade for food. Later on Mark went into town himself for the
first time for food, so Tzili didn’t have to but he never came back to her and his unborn baby.
After losing her love of her life she runs into other survivors and they take care each other and
Tzili and the unborn baby. Tzili and her crew realize that the war has ended and they all felt great
knowing they were survivors of the terrible things they have been through. Later on when they
arrived in Zagreb things got difficult and bad in the pregnancy and she was rushed to the hospital
finding out she had lost another person she loved, her baby. She later on met a friend named
