As I reflect on our studies on the Holocaust, my beginning knowledge on it and my knowledge at the end is unfathomable. My view on the world and history has changed immensely, as I do perceive people more on how they act and how they are, instead of how Hitler saw the Jews, just for being different from him because of their religion. I recall in the Life is Beautiful how the wife, Dora, chose to go to the concentration camp with her family, although she was not forced to because she was not Jewish. The Germans were splitting up families for no reason, and although the film was fiction, it was very brave of Dora to join her family to go to the concentration camp. The film also brought me to understand on how hard it must’ve been to keep spirits high, and to manipulate one's child, as Guido did with his son, Joshua, and make them believe that everything would be alright. In the film, Guido had his son believe that for them to get out of the concentration camp, they had to earn 1,000 points. To win 1,000 points, you would have to complete task, such as doing labor, and eating all of your food without speaking. In addition, the winner at the end would win a real tank. At the end of the movie, Guido gets shot by one of the German soldiers and dies, and the Jews get liberated, and when Joshua walks into the open, he sees a real tank with an American solider driving. As Joshua hops into the tank, they start to ride down this road, and Joshua sees his mother, and the story is concluded.
The way Wiesel writes his memoir is almost like it’s written in prose, he is extremely descriptive with his writing, and his sentences flow, but he keeps the plot fast-paced and moving like the greatest poems are. There was one part I read that almost brought me to tears: the uncertainty of it, the questions it left, and the horrifying thought that it was pure hope that was keeping these people alive when there truly was nothing to hope for. “Take care of your son. He is very weak, very dehydrated. Take care of yourselves, you must avoid selections. Eat! Anything. Anytime. Eat all you can. The weak don’t last very long around here”… And he himself was so thin, so withered, so weak… “The only thing that keeps me alive,” he kept saying, “is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up.” One evening, he came to see us, his face radiant. “A transport just arrived from Antwerp. I shall go to see them tomorrow. Surely they will hav...
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