Julia's Stary writing camp portfolio

Title: Betti was my name -Betti 'Beatrice' Elbe -Oleg Rosenau -Joanna Berg -Oliver  -Charlotte Elbe -Helmuth Elbe -Nick Koster -Frau Gerda Leare -Hans Leare -Liesen Leare Ideas -Betti starts out as being mildly overweight -Underground resistance work -Betti and Oleg falling in love -Betti is initially sent to Auschwitz where she becomes the subject of some experimentation. A doctor eventually discovers she had polycystic ovary syndrome (a condition that was not acknowledged at the time) and removes her ovaries. She loses a great deal of weight because of this but starts deteriorating. -Betti is noticed within the camp for her singing voice, earning her a job in the Kommandant's household. The Commandant becomes obsessed with her singing, leading to jealousy from his other soldiers. She does, however, reunite with her friend Nick. -Betti's sister Charlotte becomes a p********e in Auschwitz, unwilling to help her mother and sister. She is later found to be alive, but Betti no longer wishes to see her. -She and Oleg reunite at another camp where their union is happy, but still under threat. Oleg works for the underground resistance, and his work inadvertently leads to Betti having her throat cut by SS men. She survives the attack, only to lose her voice permanently. -Surviving the camps, Betti and Oleg decide to start life together, in Palestine. Betti aspires to start her own school for deaf and mute children. Timeline January 1943: Betti gets her job at the Leare household March 1943: Betti and her family are transported to Auschwitz June 1943: Betti is commissioned by the camp Commandant as a singer September 1943: Betti is selected for a transport to Plaszow October 1943: Betti is reunited with Oleg January 1944: Oleg's father dies May 1944: Betti is held hostage and almost dies from her injuries. August 1944: Oleg gifts Betti with a new diary September 1944: Betti begins her duties in the underground resistance January 1945: Plaszow is liberated by the red army April 1945: Betti and Oleg arrive in Palestine Drawing the plot Told in the format of a diary, Betti lives in the Krakow Ghetto with her family and friends. Betti dreams of being a singer, but instead, takes a job as a nanny for a rich, German family. The mother, Frau Leare, constantly drinks and abuses Betti both physically and verbally. Jeering at Betti about her weight and Jewish heritage. It comes to the point where Betti is almost killed when Frau Leare accidently pushes her down the stairs in a drunken fit.  After this incident, Frau Leare starts sending Betti gifts and it is eventually revealed that she is a closeted lesbian, having married Captain Leare to conceal this. She soon makes a pass at Betti, but is nearly discovered by her husband. It is unknown if Captain Leare knows of it, but regardless, Betti is caught up in the transport of Jews being sent to the Auschwitz camps. She and her brothers are separated on the train, leaving her with her mother and sister, sent off for work detail. Over three months, Betti and her mother have worked in the quarries. Betti's mother, Helene, is deteriorating, while Betti doesn't lose as much weight as the others. A kind doctor at the camps examines Betti and discovers that she has ovarian cysts. Suspecting they are cancerous, and knowing that a new discovery would satisfy the s******c doctor Mengele, the doctor removes them. Unbeknownst to Betti, she had polycystic ovary syndrome; the removal of the ovaries being the removal of her slow metabolism.  She begins to deteriorate alongside her mother, but is given another survival opportunity when she is forced to sing before the SS guards. She is sent to the Commandant as a gift, who recognizes her from Captain Leare's household.  She sings for the Commandant once a week, who slowly becomes obsessed with her singing voice. At the Commandant's house, she is reunited with her childhood friend Nick, who brings vegetables in from the camps gardens. He tells her that is family is dead, that her brother Helmuth is alive, but he saw her brother Alexei, being taken to the gas chambers. As the Commandant looks at Betti more as a celebrity, his soldiers grow jealous and bitter. They put Betti on a transport to Plaszow concentration camp. There, she is happily reunited with Oleg and his father, but this happiness is short-lived. Oleg is working secret jobs, while Betti tends to his dying father. She shares her rations with him, only to forget that she can't hold onto her weight anymore. Oleg's father eventually dies, leaving Oleg devastated and growing evermore distant. Betti discovers that Oleg is working in an underground resistance, and that the Amon Goth's men are onto him. Betti goes to warn Oleg, only to be captured by Goth's men and held hostage. When Oleg comes to rescue Betti, they threaten to cut Betti's throat if he doesn't show them where the ammunition is. He does so, only for them to follow through with the threat and cut her throat anyway. Betti narrowly survives the attack, being nursed back to health by a kindly, old doctor. Although she survived, the attack severed Betti's vocal chords, rendering her permanently mute. Betti struggles with this, being unable to communicate with others, but Oleg supports her through the ordeal by gifting her another diary, after her first one was left behind. Betti dubs this diary 'her future' and as she regains some of her heath, she joins the underground resistance. Using her muteness as an advantage for keeping secrets. She and Oleg are able to warn some others of the allies entering Poland, which gives them the opportunity to escape Goth's wrath. When the camp is liberated, Oleg proposes to Betti, which she accepts, sighing 'yes'. Two months later, the two have made it to Palestine, where Betti happens upon a vacant building. She plans to turn this building into a school for the deaf, mute and misplaced. Added details -Betti's main motivation is to survive, and to help those closest to her survive as well. She takes the opportunities she is offered because it means providing for her family, even if the consequences end up hurting her. She endures a***e from Frau Leare because at the end of the day, she gets what is needed-the extra rations which she can share with her loved ones. She agrees to sell her cyst-infested ovaries because she is being paid for them-and she is aware that getting pregnant in a place like Auschwitz is a terrible fate, especially for a baby. When Betti loses her voice, she must learn that she still has a voice, and there are other ways to use that voice. -Oleg's main motivation is that, if he has to go down, he has to go down fighting. He immerses himself in the underground resistance because it means he gets to do something that serves a good purpose-even if he doesn't end up surviving. His survival only comes into concern when Betti nearly dies as a punishment to his freedom-fighting. He realizes that he cares about his own life as well, as how close he came to losing the last person alive who still loves him. -Charlotte's (Betti's sister) objective is to survive: no matter what the consequences. As survival becomes harder to maintain, Charlotte feels that she must sacrifice more and more if she wants to come out of the war alive. She becomes a camp p********e and slowly lets go of her connection to family and friendship. Although she does survive, she realizes that she has nobody else, and must fight to win back what little family she has left. Chapter one outline Betti starts by writing a hypothetical letter to her friend Nick, two months after his disappearance. Betti and Oleg travel to the employment office to sign up for work detail. Oleg gets a job at the enamel factory, and Betti gets work as a nanny for a prominent German household. Seeing this as their last, free day together, they get their friends together and play music near the Ghetto's gates. Betti is asked to 'sing for her supper' so she sings a slowed-down version of a popular German love-song. To her surprise, she is rewarded with doubled food-rations. Her feelings towards Oleg are hinted, but not expanded upon. Chapter two outline Betti begins her job at the Leare household. She befriends the oldest boy, Hans, and starts to teach the younger three. The day starts as promising when she meets the staff: Luba, a German Jew, Marcella, a French maid and Jose, a Hispanic caretaker. However, it soon turns sour when she meets her employer, Frau Gerda Leare. A beautiful, but cruel and violent woman who makes Betti her new target. Betti falters just twice, and is given a black-eye for it. When she returns home she is comforted by her mother and brother, but told by her housemate that she must stick to the rules if she wants to avoid more injuries. Chapter three outline A month passes by as Betti continues her job at the Leare household. She manages to avoid Frau Leare's wrath during the day-time, but cannot avoid her drunken attacks at night. She hides the bruises with makeup to avoid her families questions. She continues to form bonds with the children, particularly Hans and Liesen, the older two. Hans struggles with the anti-Semitism taught in the Hitler youth, while Liesen fights the sexist attitudes shown in the girls group. She wants to be a mathematician, but the group encourages girls to have babies for the Fatherland as soon as they are able. While Betti knows these attitudes are wrong, she cannot say so under threat of her own life. Although she feels for these children, her sister Charlotte reminds Betti that 'at least they have a future-what are we guaranteed?'