Significant Teachings From Your Name Is Renée By Stacy Cretzmeyer

Significant Teachings from Your Name is Renée

Frozen with terror at the sound of voices. Rumbling stomachs begging for unreachable food. Never seeing the sunlight unless fortunate enough to have a window. Lying still for hours with horrifying thoughts of being found. Constant sparks of fear in weary hearts. These were some of the things suffered by the Jews in hiding late into World War II, although they knew they would face much worse if they were discovered. Your Name is Renée by Stacy Cretzmeyer is the true story of Ruth Kapp, a young Jewish girl enduring the darkest days of the Holocaust with her parents. The Jews during this time faced government sanctioned discrimination and isolation, and were forced to take desperate action to survive.

The Nazis isolated Ruth’s family by forcing them to flee town, for they receive word of an upcoming roundup in their apartment building that, if they stayed, would take them to a concentration camp (Cretzmeyer 37). Another one of the ways the Nazis separated Ruth’s family is when her father has to go live with a farmer in the mountains to avoid being captured by the Nazis (Cretzmeyer 116-119). Ruth and two other Jewish children are also isolated when they are sent to a church’s orphanage so they can be safer from the Nazis (Cretzmeyer

One such action is when people had to hide others for their safety, which is why the house of the Valats, a French couple who were helping Jews, had a secret room built into the wall of their kitchen to hide them (Cretzmeyer 98). Another thing the people around Ruth had to do was to get by without some of the things they used to have. For instance, Ruth’s Aunt Hanna makes little cakes for Ruth and the other children staying with them to eat, but they taste dry, strange, and aren’t sweet because Aunt Hanna doesn’t have the right ingredients (Cretzmeyer 77). Another thing people were forced to do in these dark times was to change who they were in order to survive. For example, Ruth’s family gets false papers to hide their identities, and they change their last names from Kapp to Caper (Cretzmeyer 56-58). Furthermore, Ruth’s cousin Jeannette gives her the French name Renée so that people won’t know she’s Jewish. Jeannette often told Ruth, “Your name is Renée and you are French!” (Cretzmeyer