Who is Shmuel in The Devil's Arithmetic?
In The Devil's Arithmetic, Hannah Stern, a girl who is bored by stories of the Holocaust, is transported back into the midst of it. She finds herself in 1942 on the border between Poland and Germany, living in a Yiddish-speaking household. In this reality (which, for obvious reasons, seems unreal to Hannah), she is Chaya Abramowicz, a girl who is recovering from an attack of cholera, which killed both her parents.
Shmuel is Chaya's uncle who, along with his sister, Gitl, has been looking after her during her illness. At the time Hannah travels back in time, Shmuel is about to marry Fayge, a girl from a neighboring village. However, when the wedding party arrives at Fayge's village, the family are arrested by the Nazis and taken away for resettlement. Shmuel does not know what this means, though Hannah, having studied the Holocaust, can see what is going to...
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After a failed escape plan in the concentration camp, Shmuel is executed. He is portrayed as a brave man who is also kind, generous, and loyal, never failing in his love for Fayge, whom he holds in his arms until the last moment. The courage of Shmuel and others she meets in the past convince Hannah of the importance of remembering the Holocaust.
Who is Shifre in The Devil's Arithmetic?
The Devil's Arithmetic is a work of historical fiction by Jane Yolen published in 1988. It centers on a young Jewish girl, Hannah Stern (aka Chaya), who has become disinterested with the stories her relatives tell about the plight of the Jewish people, especially during World War II. As a consequence, she gets transported to 1942 Poland so she can learn about the past by personally experiencing the tragedies of the Holocaust.
Shifre is a friend of Chaya's from the village who is close to her in age. We meet her just before the wedding of Chaya's uncle, Shmuel. Shifre is a small supporting character in the story and one of four girls Chaya initially meets, along with Esther, Yente, and Rachel.
Chaya and Shifre work together in the labor camp's kitchen dishing out meals to the others interned there, cleaning the cooking kettles, carrying giant buckets of water, and scrubbing the floors. During this time they get close, and Chaya tells her and the other girls stories that sound like fairytales to them.
Shifre winds up dying in the camp and, along with the deaths of many of the other characters, helps Chaya understand the importance of the past, her religion, her relatives' stories and the sacrifices of so many Jews.
What is Shmuel's physical appearance in The Devil's Arithmetic?
Chaya, or Hannah, as she is in the present day, is still trying to get used to her strange new surroundings when a big, bearded man marches into the house where she's living and suddenly grabs her and starts spinning her around. The young lady was somewhat confused and disoriented to begin with and now she's even more so.
The man in question is none other than Chaya's uncle Shmuel. In present-day New York, Hannah doesn't have an Uncle Shmuel, especially not one who looks like this. As we've already seen, Shmuel is a big, bearded man; he also smells like sweat, grass, and horses. But he's a jolly man with a contagious sense of joy. Chaya can only respond by giving her uncle a nice big hug.
It tells us a lot about Shmuel's extraordinary personality that Chaya can give him a hug even though he still smells from work and hasn't yet had a chance to bathe. The fact that he's about to get married is also instructive. Shmuel's sister Gitl may express surprise that Fayge has accepted Shmuel's offer of marriage, but one can reasonably assume that she's responded positively to the genuine warmth and ebullience of her future husband's personality.