Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli. cycle 18 reading response 15-30

In the next pages of the story Uri and Stopthief go to the parade of Jackboots. Uri keeps his distance from the Jackboots because he knows that they aren’t the nicest people. Stopthief thinks differently. Stopthief ends up running into the parade and runs into a Jackboot. The Jackboot was nice to Stopthief, smiling at him and helping Stopthief up. The Jackboot asks if Stopthief was a Jew but Stopthief says that he is a Gypsy. The Jackboot says I hope so and then walks away. Stopthief then thinks that Jackboots are really nice and he always tries to make friends with any Jackboot he sees. Uri keeps telling Stopthief that Jackboots aren’t nice and avoid them in anyway.
The next day Uri and Stopthief walk down the streets and find a crowd of people. They go and see what is happening. They find a bunch of Jackboots laughing over a man dipping his beard into a bucket of soap-water and scrubbing the sidewalk. Uri then tells Stopthief that they are going. They leave but then see another group of Jackboots laughing as they were cutting an old mans beard. Stopthief then thought that if you had a beard then it was bad. Uri told him that it wasn’t that but it something else.

I think that the Jackboots do not like Jews because when Stopthief runs into the Jackboot he says that he hoped that Stopthief wasn’t a jew. Also it would explain why Uri is so scared of Jackboots because Uri is a Jew. Also the men with beards were probably Jews and that is why they were being humiliated.