Book assignment: Reunion

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Name: Luciaan Groenier Class: 11E Teacher: Rob Martens Date: 26-11-2008

Introduction
At the moment that I had to buy a book for this assignment, I lost my folder with all the information for it. So I just picked a book, which appealed to me and started to read. After a while a classmate told me that it had to be a biography or a travel story or something. But after I heard that, it was already to late to start a different book. So I made a book assignment about Reunion. I hope it will serve the exercise anyway.

Summary of the book

The story is about a German boy, Hans Schwarz and a Polish boy, Konradin. Hans is a 16 years old boy, who lives in Stuttgart. Hans is Jewish. He lives a fairly boring life. The reason of that is that he doesnt have al lot of friends. And often hes getting teased on school. So I can say that he didnt really like his live very much. But when he goes to a new class in school, he meets Konradin von Hohenfels, and they become friends. Konradin was part of a very rich and powerful family. This family, unfortunately, hates Jews, but Hans isnt aware of that. They both have the same hobby, to collect old coins. After a little while they become very close friends and they did everything together. Konradin is often going to Hans house and he has very good contact with the parents of Hans. But when Hans is going for the first time to Konradins house, his parents arent at home. Every time when they go to Konradins place, his parents are gone. Hans find it quite strange and asks about it. Konradin say to Hans that his mother is Polish and that she doesnt like Jewish people, like the family Schwarz. The friendship between Hans and Konradin is fading away, because Konradin encourage the ideas of Hitler. And when Hans and his parents are going to a theatre play, they see Konradin with his family. Hans waves to them, but at that moment Konradin isnt reacting. This makes Hans feel very disappointed and mad.

Now their friendship is as good as over. About a year before the Second World War start, the parents of Hans tells him to go to America, because he must escape from Germany and they wanted him to live a save and happy life. When Hans is in America, he is going to study. He lives in New York with his aunt and uncle. He received a farewell letter from Konradin, which is very sad, because the last contact they will have is with a letter. Hans wants to write poems, but his uncle wants to get him to a school where he can study to be a lawyer. Thirty years later Hans married in America, and becomes a lawyer. Now hes a happy man had almost forgotten his annoying time in Germany in his past. But when hes reading a list and getting asked to donate money for his old classmates from the Karl Alexander GymnasiumSchool (the school where he met Konradin) the situation will change. Its a list with all the names from his old classmates whove been killed in the Second World War and the reasons why they killed. He gets again in contact with the annoying time he had in Germany. And in the list with the names off all his old schoolmates who died, Hans didnt dare to look to the letter H from Hohenfels, because he didnt wanted to know what happened to Konradin. But when he decides to look he saw that Konradin was died also. He couldnt believe it. In the same list was mentioned that Konradin was planning to kill Hitler and when this was discovered, Konradin was executed. It was terrible to read for Hans, because he couldnt take farewell from Konradin. It gives him also a good feeling, because his friend changes his ideas of Hitler, but so far that he even wanted to kill him.