8A Night Blog 2018

After spending the last few weeks studying and talking about the Holocaust it has brought so much to my attention and changed my perspective on most of the world. We read examples of literature which presented people’s first hand experiences, watched multiple films on the subject, and even interpreted photographs from the camps and from other places during the time period. After looking at all of this, talking about it, and analyzing these documents I have experienced so many emotions but the one that resonated the most was that feeling of disgust. How could another person possibly find a reason to do this to another person? What gives them reason to do this? Multiple times I thought about this while watching the Italian film Life Is Beautiful. When the men were carrying anvils to melt down and Guido is so overcome by pain and fatigue that he is tempted to drop the anvil but only stops himself when his inmate told him dropping the anvil would result in death. The t...

Don’t lose faith Don’t give in--- I can’t go on-- The old familiar fear: not to lose him I didn’t want to leave my father Give me water Help me go on-- Water was the worst poison for him, but what what else could I do, It would soon be over anyway I could see his lips trembling I shall never forget the gratitude that shone in his eyes He had called out to me but I had not answered Perhaps he was still breathing When they took him to the crematorium I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not

Night presents many ideas and creates many themes along the way. One that I really took notice of was the theme of the importance of family, not just to Elie but to so many people experiencing the same things as him. In the preface Elie mentions witnessing his father being beaten to death and that experience being one of the most mentally crippling things he experienced during the Holocaust. Elie was near his father while this was taking place but an SS officer was nearby as well. “"Well?" The SS had flown into a rage and was striking my father on the head: "Be quiet, old man! Be quiet!" My father no longer felt the club's blows; I did. And yet I did not react. I let the SS beat my father, I left him alone in the clutches of death. Worse: I was angry with him for having been noisy, for having cried, for provoking the wrath of the SS. "Eliezer! Eliezer! Come, don't leave me a l o n e … " His voice had reached me from so far away, from so close. Bu...

Terrified women and children walk towards the ends of their lives in the gas chambers, while at the death camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau.

After reading the first forty pages of Elie Wiesel’s Night I have read and almost experienced what it was like for a Jewish person to go through a concentration camp. There were many times were I felt sick to my stomach, hopeful, and most times just sad or angry. Elie and his father are still moving through the concentration camp, and the Germans are still doing “selections”. They had done well in the previous ones and at this point all the men in their group were without clothing in a room. “My father thought the opposite. Better not to draw attention. (We later found out that he had been right. Those who were selected that day were incorporated into the SonderKommando, the Kommando working in the crematoria. Béla Katz, the son of an important merchant of my town, had arrived in Birkenau with the first transport, one week ahead of us. When he found out that we were there, he succeeded in slipping us a note. He told us that having been chosen because of his strength, he had been force...