Deivassagayame 1

Nimra Deivassagayame

Professor Fakhrid-Deen

English 101-0C1

Responding to literature essay

27 October 2023

The Magic Shawl: A Tribute to Holocaust Victims

In the course of humanity, wars and genocides left an unerasable footprint on the lives of

their victims. The Third Reich was one of the most dreadful periods in history. The Nazi

regime’s despotism focused on total destruction of civil freedoms through the Gestapo and

concentration camps (Evans). This rendered absolute control and repression of human dignity

during the Holocaust. How did the victims live under this totalitarian regime? What were their

sentiments? How did they cope with the harsh reality? “The Shawl,” a short story by Cynthia

Ozick, demonstrates the inhumane conditions the Holocaust victims had to survive and how they

were stripped away of hope and expectations of good. In this short story, there are three key

characters, each exhibiting a different facet of this tragedy. Rosa, the mother and caregiver;

Magda, her fifteen month old infant; and Stella, a fourteen year old victim of the Holocaust. All

three characters are bound by a common theme, the powers of the shawl. Ozick uses the

symbolism of the shawl to reflect comfort and protection, relating to motherhood and how at the

end it fails to liberate the characters from the shackle of the Nazi regime.

The shawl is a means of sustenance, protection, and playfulness for Magda, which

symbolizes motherhood. Magda, bundled up in the shawl is hidden and protected between her

mother’s breasts. As they are walking to the concentration camp, the author describes Rosa as
 Deivassagayame 2

“someone in a faint, in trance, arrested in a fit, someone who is already a floating angel,”

demonstrating the cachectic state of her physical body. Therefore, as stated by Ozick “Rosa’s

teats…both were cracked, not a sniff of milk.” Magda, a small infant, still needing her mother’s

colostrum, begins to suck on the shawl, “it was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for

three days and three nights.” Magda drinks from the shawl, which eases her hunger and soothes

her. When Rosa had to leave the barracks, Magda was rolled into the shawl creating an

instantaneous camouflage against soldiers and anyone who could cause her harm. The shawl kept

Magda quiet and comfortable enough that she did not require the presence of her mother for a

long period of time. Furthermore, the shawl protected Magda from the fumigation of the

crematorium and gas chambers: “the bad wind with pieces of black in it, that made Stella’s and

Rosa’s eyes tear.” At this point, the shawl is a palpable mother figure for Magda. It provided

warmth, reassurance, and safety. Additionally, there is a playful aspect to the shawl, “Magda

laughed at her shawl when the wind blew its corners,” this is a sign of enjoyment; Magda is

amused by the blowing sensation of the wind on the shawl, equal to a mother softly blowing on

her child’s forehead. Hence, when the shawl is taken away from her, Magda cries for her

maternal object, “Maaaa . . . aaa!” and the author explains, “It was the first noise Magda had ever

sent out from her throat since the drying up of Rosa’s nipples.” Even as the soldier picks her up

to execute her, Magda reaches out for her shawl, when her mother waves it at her. This is a

devastating picture of cruelty, in which Magda, an innocent child, unable to be comforted or

protected by her own mother, imprinted on the shawl, an inanimate object.

In the instance of Rosa, the shawl possesses divine abilities that keep Magda safe and

well, in spite of the surrounding terror. As a mother, Rosa wants to care and provide for Magda.

However, Rosa lives in the constant dilemma of caring for Magda or getting killed by the
 Deivassagayame 3

soldiers. While marching with Magda wrapped in her shawl around her breasts, she is aware of

Magda’s poor nutritional and health status, “her legs could not hold up her fat belly. It was fat

with air, full and round.” While Rosa’s motherly instincts press her to hand Magda over to

someone on the road, the fear of soldiers overcomes her. “If she moved out of line they might

shoot.” As Magda develops and reaches her milestones, Rosa’s fears only grow. “When Magda

began to walk Rosa knew that Magda was going to die very soon, something would happen.”

Consequently, regardless of Rosa’s initiatives to protect Magda; she considers that Magda cannot

survive and will meet certain death. “Rosa knew Magda was going to die very soon; she should

have been dead already.” Still, Magda does not die and survives till she is able to walk. This is

the miracle of the shawl, “it was a magic shawl, it could nourish an infant for three days and

three nights.” Thus, Rosa continues to tap into the shawl’s magical properties to shield Magda

from the soldiers, Stella, and the elements. She allows Magda to bathe in the shawl; bathe in the

comfort and nurturance that she so deeply needs, and that Rosa herself can not provide. “The

magic shawl” allowed Magda to stay alive. “Magda, deserted, was quiet under the shawl,

sucking on her corner. Every day Magda was silent, and so she did not die.” The shawl enabled

Rosa to watch her child grow, admire Magda’s “blue eyes”, hear her “laughs”, and smell her

“cinnamon and almond” breath. There was a mystical aspect to “the magic shawl.” Within the

sanctum of the shawl both Rosa and her child were preserved from the merciless reality they

lived in. The shawl created a sacred bondage between mother and child. At the time of Magda’s

death, Rosa stands quiet, incapable of saving her infant or recovering her body. The voices who

urge her to go to her child are overthrown by the fear of annihilation. Instead, she placed the

shawl in her mouth to prevent any loud laments that could draw the attention of soldiers and

sipped on “the cinnamon and almond depth of Magda’s saliva.” This is parallel to how Magda
 Deivassagayame 4

sucked on the shawl’s corner to feel the essence of her mother. Rosa’s dismay in the face of this

tragic event proves the demoralization and the terror caused by the Nazi regime. Rosa had no

other choice, but to instill mothership onto an object to try to preserve Magda.

Fourteen year old Stella envied and despised Magda, for Magda was cared for by Rosa

through “the magic shawl” and appeared to be of Germanic descent. Stella coveted the shawl to

feel the same love and security that Magda experienced from Rosa. She “wanted to be wrapped

in a shawl, hidden away, asleep.” Similar to Magda, Stella, a young girl, also perceived the shawl

as a protective, mother-like object. Her envy (of the bond shared by Rosa and Magda) originates

from Stella’s own unfortunate circumstance. Despite Stella’s youth, she frequently felt the

absence of a caregiver. Rosa’s focus was solely on Magda and “looked at Stella’s bones without

pity.” Equally to Rosa, Stella was only bones, she did not have proper nourishment, “Stella did

not menstruate.” Furthermore, the famishment is so severe that it incited cannibalistic tendencies

in her: “Stella, would steal Magda to eat her.” The starvation and lack of support from her kin

explains her resentment toward Magda who is cared for by Rosa and “the magic shawl.” When

Stella studies Magda’s face, she mentions the word “Aryan.” At the time of the Holocaust,

Adolph Hitler, proclaimed that Germans belonged to the superior Aryan race (Hutton).

Subsequently, we can speculate that Magda is half jewish and half German. Magda’s blue eyes

and soft yellow hair depict the notion of an Aryan origin, “eyes blue as air, smooth feathers of

hair nearly as yellow as the Star sewn in to Rosa’s coat.” The star on Rosa’s coat represents the

yellow star of David, also known as the Jewish badge used to segregate the Jewish people from

the Germans (“Jewish Travelers”). Magda’s blue eyes and blonde hair are physical attributes that

entice Stella to cause harm to Magda who looks just like her oppressors. Though Stella is

portrayed as a perpetrator, “Stella took the shawl away and made Magda die,” her actions
 Deivassagayame 5

demonstrate the inhumane conditions that the Jewish people lived in and how they were reduced

to fighting like varmints in order to survive. “Stella said: ‘“I was cold.”’ And afterward she was

always cold, always. The cold went into her heart.” This statement from Rosa describes the

irreversible primitiveness of Stella and her loss of humanity.

Overall, Ozicks short-fiction is a tribute to the victims of the Holocaust, their tribulations

and destitutions. They were destituted from their home, their family, and of their basic

humanness. No fellow feeling could emanate in the concentration camps. Ozick used “the magic

shawl” to demonstrate the horrific dehumanization situation in the concentration camps. The

shawl endured as the symbol of motherhood and holy protection that Magda, Rosa, and Stella

clinged to, in order to survive. Magda fed and sheltered herself in the shawl, Rosa viewed the

shawl as the holy guardian of Magda, and Stella wanted to feel warmth and compassion from the

shawl in vain. The symbolism of the shawl demonstrates the hopelessness, fears, and barbarism

faced by the characters during the Holocaust, which the shawl could not save them from.
 Deivassagayame 6

Works Cited

Evans, Richard J. “Coercion and Consent in Nazi Germany.” British Academy eBooks, 2007,

https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197264249.003.0002.

Hutton, Christopher. “Nazi Race Theory and Belief in an ‘Aryan Race’: A Profound Failure of

Interdisciplinary Communication.” The International Journal of Science in Society, vol. 1, no. 4,

Jan. 2010, pp. 149–56. https://doi.org/10.18848/1836-6236/cgp/v01i04/51498.

“Jewish Travelers in Early Modern Italy: Visible and Invisible Resistance to the Jewish Badge.”

De Gruyter eBooks, 2019, pp. 73–89. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110635942-005.