I will Plant you a Lilac Tree

I will Plant you a Lilac Garden is honestly one of my favorite books ever.  Laura Hillman’s story is one of hope during a dark time, courage under fire, and love despite brutality.  It follows her from the time when she was still called Hannelore and lived at a boarding school for Jewish girls in Berlin.  When she receives a letter from her mother telling her that her father is dead and that she and her brothers Selly and Wolfgang are being deported east she gets permission to go with them.  The story follows her through her times in a ghetto, eight labor and concentration camps, and her love affair with a polish Nazi guard.  She is also put on Schindler’s list but I won’t tell anything about the ending involving her soldier or whether or not she made it to Schindler’s factory.  The memoir was written by Laura Hillman, Holocaust Survivor.  What makes Hillman unique, even from other people in the Holocaust, is that she was one of the chosen few on Oskar Schindler’s list and that she fell in love with one of the guards at a concentration camp.  She is obviously an expert on not only life in the ghettos and concentration camps but also of her own life.  The purpose of I will Plant you a Lilac Tree, like most Holocaust memoirs, is to share a story.    It also shows people the circumstances of Nazi Germany in a way that a textbook never will.  The memoir takes place during ages 16 to 18 of Hillman’s life from 1942 until 1945.  During this period of time Laura Hillman, like many other Jews, was a victim to hate crimes during the Holocaust.  I think there was no particular audience.  With memoirs I never really believe the author is writing for anyone but themselves so they can get the memories onto paper.  Regardless, her audience ended up being anyone curious about the Holocaust and probably even other survivors who might have found comfort in seeing that other people made it out “okay.”  The most predominately used rhetorical device in this book was pathos. In telling her story and the terrible injustices she went though Laura causes the reader to empathize with her.  The most effective uses of pathos in my opinion were the times that she had every day feelings that allowed readers who haven’t experienced anything like the Holocaust to relate to her more.  An example of this would be when she said “Love is not something you plan, it just happens.”  Even people who haven’t fallen in love recognize surprise and will be able to recognize that.  Another rhetorical device Hillman used throughout her memoir was diction.  Her story was retold in short sentences as if she were speaking out loud to each and every person that read the book.  It also gave the impression the words she was writing were difficult to choose and write because of the importance they held to her.  A quote that shows this is one which tells the story of the memoir's title “‘A lilac tree,’ I said.  ‘It bloomed every May around the time of Mama’s birthday.  Papa was a romantic; he would stand under the tree and sing songs of lilacs and love to her.’”