Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Devil’s Arithmetic, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory
Sacrifice
Jewish Culture and Identity
Hope
Summary
Analysis
Shmuel and the rabbi go to talk to the Nazi officer with medals. When Shmuel comes back to Hannah, he says the Nazi has ordered all of the Jewish people in town to enter the trucks to be “resettled.” Hannah remembers what’s happening and tries to warn everyone about concentration camps. Gitl, however, believes Hannah is just telling another fairy tale, like the stories she told earlier.
While Hannah is growing up over the course of the story, Gitl and other characters still view her as a child in some ways, which is why they don’t take her dire predictions about the Holocaust seriously. Gitl, who has lived in a small community her whole life, can’t even imagine a tragedy on the scale of the Holocaust existing in the first place.
Themes
The Nazi officer encourages the residents of the shtetl to hurry up and board the truck, promising that all their needs will be taken care of. The rabbi believes these promises, telling everyone that the war is almost over and they won’t be relocated for long.
The gullible rabbi represents how many Jewish people (and others) underestimated the threat that the Nazis posed. This passage shows the importance of memory, since Hannah (who remembers hearing about the Holocaust in school) recognizes the danger of the situation while many of the others from the shtetl remain blissfully ignorant.
Themes
Families climb into the Nazi trucks together. Some act like it’s a vacation, but Hannah thinks everyone looks like cattle going off to be slaughtered. The adults sing songs to comfort the children.
