Blog Post 1 ~ Jack W.

Elie Wiesel’s Night, is an enthralling book. It includes elements of hope, faith, and horror. The book is very fast paced, but makes it easy to understand what is going on in World War II. On the 10th page, he is being moved into a ghetto, a place where many Jews were kept for later resettlement. The town’s people of Elie’s hometown, couldn’t and didn’t believe that the Germans were killing people, especially Jews. “The same day, Hungarian police burst into every Jewish home in town: a Jew henceforth to own gold, jewelry, or any valuables… ‘The yellow star? So what? It’s not lethal’…  Then came the ghettos.” (10)

Wiesel shows us how the Hungarian police, who were allied with the Nazis, turned on the Jews of Hungarian towns, who had been living there for a long time. Then, when he talks about the yellow star, the Jews, who are already being tortured, have to wear a yellow star that tells others that they are Jewish. The Hungarian police and the Nazis, “forcefully told” the non - Jews, to disrespect Jews. This is a melancholy part in the book. It makes me feel despondent and full of sadness. The fact that the Nazis killed Jews, separated them, and made them humiliate themselves through a star on their shirt is frightening and haunting.

Later in the book when the Jews have arrived at Auschwitz, they thought the conditions would be good. They were excited because they were not being separated, and there was work. They were scared, but their fears were hidden by the joy that came when they had been freed from the cattle cars. The Jews were forced to leave their luggage in the cars. When Wiesel tells the reader that Nazis ordered, “Men to the left! Women to the right! … ‘Poor devils, you are heading to the crematorium.’” (29), he showed us that the Nazis lied, and that they did, in fact, separate the men and women.