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A blokova is a prisoner in a concentration camp who acts as an overseer to the other prisoners. Like many blokovas, the one Hannah encounters is not Jewish and looks down on the Jewish prisoners as beneath her. The blokova has already lost two of her fingers to the Nazis as punishment because she failed to keep the Jewish prisoners in line, and over the course of the novel, she loses a third finger.
The Blokova Quotes in The Devil’s Arithmetic
The The Devil’s Arithmetic quotes below are all either spoken by The Blokova or refer to The Blokova. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 11
Quotes
“You are zugangi, newcomers, the lowest of the low,” the tall, dark-haired woman said to them as they huddled in the stark barracks room. She was in a blue dress with green piping and the short sleeves displayed a long number tattooed on her arm.
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Chapter 12
Quotes
“When the man finished the number, he reached out and touched the collar of her dress, smoothing it down gently. “Live,” he whispered. “For my Chaya. For all our Chayas. Live. And remember.”
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Get the entire The Devil’s Arithmetic LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Blokova Character Timeline in The Devil’s Arithmetic
The timeline below shows where the character The Blokova appears in The Devil’s Arithmetic. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 11
...tattoo of a prisoner, but the woman specifies that she isn’t Jewish. She is a blokova, a prisoner who oversees the other prisoners. To punish Hannah for speaking up, the woman...
(full context)
The blokova orders everyone to undress to shower together. When many are uncomfortable with this, she tells...
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Chapter 12
...she waits for the barber to finish on everyone, Hannah begins to get hungry. The blokova orders all the Jewish people to pick new clothes to wear from the camp supply....
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Chapter 13
After the meal, the blokova lines up all the Jewish prisoners in a seemingly arbitrary order and slaps many of...
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Chapter 15
...rewarded with scraps of food. Hannah learns that Rivka offered a gold ring to the blokova in order to prevent Hannah from being assigned to haul wood with the men.
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Chapter 16
Hannah and Shifre begin to wonder about the blokova. Rivka says that the blokova lost two of her fingers because she let the Jewish...
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Chapter 17
When Hannah and Gitl get back, the blokova hears them and asks what they were doing. Gitl says she just went out to...
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...shoes and know she was trying to escape. Gitl tells Hannah that she stole the blokova’s shoes so that Hannah would have better shoes to escape—and so it’s only the blokova’s...
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Chapter 18
Rivka whispers that the boy carrying away Fayge’s body is her brother Wolfe. The blokova comes by and orders everyone to get back to work. She has a fresh bloody...
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