The Devil's Arithmetic Summary

Thirteen year old Hannah Stern is a young Jewish girl, who travels back in time to 1942, during the time of the Holocaust. She's transported to a quiet, little, farm town in Poland. Hannah is addressed as, "Chaya," her Hebrew name, by two people. They are Gitl and Shmuel, Chaya's aunt and uncle. Hannah still has her memories of her time and family, but she's in Chaya's body. She's too confused to try to look around and figure out where she even is, so she is standing with them both speaking to her, things only Chaya would know. They spoke about her deceased parents, about how they passed away from a sickness going around the town she used to live in, Lublin. Confused and overwhelmed, Hannah was being hugged and shown emotions to. She was quickly sent off to bed by her aunt, who said she must be experiencing something from the sickness she is still recovering from. When she wakes up in the morning, she tries explaining frantically that she isn't from Poland, nor their time. They wouldn't listen and shook it off, yet again saying that it was the sickness. Hannah/Chaya will later on be taken to a concentration camp, along with a group of other people by Nazis. Hannah whimpers what she can remember from school about concentration camps, but no one will listen. She's forced through events, months in a concentration camp, trying not to get killed or hurt. Only the book will tell if she lives or not...
I think one of the themes in this book is really, don't take anything for granted. Whether it be your family, or your religion. Be proud of who you are, try to hear out what your family is speaking about. Understand what your family has been through, their suffering to get to where they are today, and all the suffering you might go through as well. The elders in your family are the wisest, listen to the life lessons they teach you, they'll get you far in life.

The Devil's Arithmetic

The beginning of the book was really interesting, the plot was good. Hannah is going through her "rebellious" teenage phase with the, "Do I have to go and celebrate the Seder?" and "Why do we celebrate the Seder?" She didn't want to eat anything either at her relative's house, because she had eaten a lot of jelly beans with her best friend, a non Jewish girl, for Easter. She engaged in many family activities, playing games, praying, eating, drinking, and celebrating. With not knowing completely what she was doing, Hannah gave her full cup of wine to The Prophet Elijah as an offering. With that, her grandfather rewarded her generosity with allowing her to open the door for Elijah. When she did, she began seeing a man, walking towards the front door she had just opened with a hoe propped on his shoulder. He sang a song Hannah was familiar with, one her family sang. She shook her head, assuming the wine had gotten to her, but then she looked again, and the scene changed even more.

Words Of The Wiser is the sign post for this. Hannah's grandfather is showing his tattoo from the concentration camp he was in, yelling at the TV and everyone when pictures of Hitler and Nazis were flashed on the screen. He tells everyone about how horrible the camps were and other things. Hannah remembers when she was jealous of her little brother, Aaron's, arrival. She tried to earn back her grandfather's attention by putting a number on her arm, just like his tattoo from the camp. She pushed so hard it wouldn't come off for a couple days, but he yelled at her, explaining to her again, how horrible the camps were and not to play around with that kind of thing, which she didn't.

Holocaust Blog

I think people were bystanders during the Holocaust simply because they were afraid. It's natural for someone being afraid to take action, they don't want to be sent to a concentration camp, have any of the things that were happening to the Jews and just targeted people, or get themselves or others killed for their actions. 
People were seeing the way the Nazis were targeting specific people and discriminating them for no good reasons, they realized or just knew since the beginning this wasn't the right thing to do. They wanted to take a stand, whether or not they had someone they knew that was killed, or going to be killed. 
I think I would have wanted to definitely help the Jews and others, unfortunately, I would be like the others, afraid. With me being afraid of the same things happening to me, I wouldn't exactly want to take the risk of my loved ones and myself dying. I believe that I read/heard that the people who were trying to protect the Jews would be treated the same way they were, isolated, killed, or even worse, be put in a concentration camp. Those who didn't agree to the Nazi rules and owned a business would fail immediately, so who's to say what would happen to the non-German people who didn't agree with the rules?