Journal Entry

Question #1

What connections do you find between the passage The Grand Mosque of Paris and the KEY CONCEPT of the unit (connections), and how is it also related with the KEY CONCEPTS of units 1 and 2 (Culture and Creativity)?

The story, The Grand Mosque of Paris, talks about the Muslim Community of Paris trying to help, to rescue the Jews during the Nazi's power in World War II. Muslims decided to make plans to free the Jews and help them escape from the city to a better place and they will be safe and will be able to walk the streets in peace, without fear. No longer have to hide to save their lives. Jews were suffering much discrimination by the Nazis, they did not want to risk to fight for their rights as they may end up in a concentration camp.

The key concept of the first unit is related to this story because is our culture is what determines the decisions, actions we take, how we behave with people around us. In this story is how the Muslim try to help the Jews, to be free.

The key concept of the second unit is also related because the Muslims had to have a large creativity to design good plans for Jews to escape safely. The help of Muslims toward Jews was great because when you create hiding places for them to go out when the guards are away from where they were, or when they created false identities to impersonate as citizens of Russia, all this saved many lives in danger.

These key concepts are presented in history by events occurred in hard, tough, war times, decide to live or die.