time in which genocide and mass murder have occurred.

There are two settings in the World War II short story "The Shawl": the road that the Jewish prisoners are marching down and the roll-call arena.

The writer doesn't describe the road setting, but that is probably because the Stella, one of the main characters, is consumed with her own hunger and the welfare of Magda--the squirrel-sized baby wrapped in a shawl. On the march, they pass villages and Rosa, Sella and Magda's mother, says that, given the chance, she would hand Magda to one of the villagers that occasionally stand at the side of the road to watch. The only thing stopping her is the soldiers who she knows will shoot her if she leaves the line.

The author doesn't describe the roll-call arena, but she does describe the surrounding area in words that suggest that the prisoners see it as another reality:

The sunheat murmured of another life, of butterflies in summer. The light was placid, mellow. On the other side of the steel fence, far away, there were green meadows speckled with dandelions and deep-colored violets; beyond them, even farther, innocent tiger lilies, tall, lifting their orange bonnets.

Rosa says, when the prisoners talk about flowers and rain in the dark barracks, they are talking about the excrement that drips from the bunks.

As the story opens, the main characters, Rosa, her infant daughter Magda, and her niece Stella, are on a forced marched to a Nazi concentration camp. It was common for the Nazis to move their prisoners from one camp to another on what came to be called death marches; if any died along the way, so much the better. Elie Wiesel describes in his book Night how he and his father had to walk from Buchenwald to Buna in the snow.

Once they arrive at the new camp, it becomes the primary setting for the horrors the story depicts. Ozick doesn't give us the name of either camp.

Obviously, because the story is about the Holocaust, the settings on both a road of exile and within a concentration camp are necessary elements of it. We are actually not told the exact location in Europe where it takes place, nor the name of the camp. In some way this lack of specificity can be said to enhance the power of the story. It has the vagueness and the texture of a nightmare. One gets the feeling from the narration that one cannot see all the details, as in a dream, and the image of the child enveloped in the shawl is symbolic of the confined, trapped circumstances of all the victims.

That said, and partly because we are not given exact details of location and time, the fundamentals of the story could be transferred to other settings in which atrocities similar to the Holocaust have been carried out. One need only look at the list of genocides that have occurred since the start of the twentieth century to see the universality of this story and the fact of cruelty, sadism, and mass murder that have been omnipresent in modern times.

The setting is important to the story because the conditions in the Holocaust caused the problem and the solution.

The events of the story could only have occurred during The Holocaust, and they also symbolically embody the horror and futility of the time period.  A woman cannot even protect her baby.  She cannot give her baby to a stranger, and if the baby is found she will be taken.

The conditions within the concentration camp are terrible.  Even though Rosa’s baby Magda survives to walk at fifteen months, she is still starving and thin.

They were in a place without pity, all pity was annihilated in Rosa, she looked at Stella’s bones without pity. She was sure that Stella was waiting for Magda to die so she could put her teeth into the little thighs.

The horror of a woman trying to protect her baby, and the horror of seeing her baby die, or even thinking the young woman would eat her baby, are conditions unique to the Holocaust.  This brief story captures the horror, helplessness, and senseless of the time.

The Shawl" by Cynthia Ozick takes place during World War II.  The Holocaust supplies the historical context for the story.  The Nazis have taken over much of Europe with most of the Jewish population in concentration or death camps.

The first part of the story takes place on a forced march to a concentration camp.  As the story begins Rosa, the mother of a small baby, and her niece Stella walk along in the miserable cold. All of them were starving.

How they walked on the roads together; Rosa with Magda curled up between sore breasts, Magda wound up in the shawl.  Sometimes Stella carried Magda. But she was jealous of Magda. A thin girl of fourteen, too small…Magda took Rosa’s nipple, and Rose never stopped waling, a walking cradle.  There was not enough milk…

During the long walk to the camp, the reader is introduced to the “shawl.”  This object enables the baby Magda to survive to the age of fifteen months. When her mother no longer had milk in her breasts, Magda would suckle the shawl to satisfy herself until her next meal.  It seemed to be a magic shawl.  It serves as a symbol of survival for the baby until it is taken from her by a jealous cousin.

When the trio arrived at the camp, surprisingly Magda thrives.  The barracks of the camp were surrounded by an electrified fence which could be heard as the women and men stood around in the yard.  The words used to describe the barracks included excrement; slow;  stinking with a maroon waterfall that slunk down from the upper bunks; and the stench which infiltrated the air of the burning of human fat. 

The barracks that the characters were assigned to was one of many that were exactly the same except for the different occupants.  In the barracks, there was row after row of bunk style beds with straw covered thin mattresses.  It was surprising that Rosa was able to hide Magda.  When she slept, Magda slept on top of her. Magda learned never to make sounds. 

Stella was cold and took Magda’s shawl from her.  Magda began to hunt for her shawl.  When her mother was not looking, the baby wandered out into the yard outside the barracks door.  Suddenly, Magda found her voice and cried out…  “Maaaaa---“

Rosa searched for the shawl and found it covering Stella. She took it from her and went to try to entice the baby back into the barracks. It was too late. 

As Rosa looked out the door of the building, she saw:

On the other side of the fence [electric]…there were green meadows speckled with dandelions and deep-colored violets; beyond them, even farther, innocent tiger lilies, tall, lifting their orange bonnets.

What a contrast to the other side of the fence with its mud and lice filled buildings.

The baby had been picked up by a Nazi soldier who carried her over his shoulder like a sack of flour.  Finally, as though he were throwing a rock, the soldier flung Magda into the fence.  She splashed against the barrier, which created many excited sounds in the fence. Magda fell to the ground burned beyond recognition.

Rosa stuck Magda’s shawl in her mouth to keep from screaming.  Then, she sucked Magda out of the shawl.

The story certainly speaks to the theme of man’s inhumanity to man.  The child was murdered with no more thought than throwing a rock into the wind.  No mother should watch her child being electrocuted to death.