8A Night Blog 2018

As a Jew, I have known about the Holocaust my entire life from Hebrew school, from books, from my parents, but I was too young to understand it. To understand how much religion really means. To understand how much life really means. In so many ways, Elie’s memoir brought the Holocaust to life, made it real, and not just a terrifying nightmare. Now I truly know what so many Jews in Europe went through during WWII. Now I truly understand how lucky Elie and my grandparents were to have survived.  I keep thinking about how Guido gave his life for his son in  a beautiful life , how courageous he truly was, and if I was in his shoes, would I do the same? He is one of the many who kept a hold on to faith in the Holocaust, but faith in what exactly? Faith in his son? Faith in a better life?  So many times in his memoir, Elie mentioned “Night”: the “kingdom of the night” or  “an endless night.” The entire book was about him surviving the Holocaust, losing his faith...

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.  It was like a page torn from a book  Like a dream in the first hours of dawn We felt the abyss opening beneath us We were all condemned to the same fate- still unknown  Finally, our illusions devoured us Consumed us I was face to face with the angel of death I don’t know how I survived Never shall I forget that smoke. Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire! We saw the flames rising from a tall chimney against a black sky Fire! I see a fire!  Jews look! Look at the fire! Look at the flames! Hunger-Thirst-Fear-Selection-Fire-Chimney And then, there was nothing, only the darkness of night Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Wide, dreamy eyes  Divine suffering The children and their fear  He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves ...

Throughout the book, I have focused on the theme of the significance “night” had to Elie. Why was this book called Night ? What significance did it have to his experience in the concentration camps? What did night symbolize? I thought about this and was struck by a realization: Elie’s life in the concentration camps was almost like an endless night. Darkness. Pain. Grief. Death. All symbolized by the night. Children are afraid of the dark, similar to the Jewish people’s rational fear of concentration camps. The uncertainty of the dark represents the uncertainty of the concentration camps. One moment you are alive and well, the next, your eyes are glazed, body cold, chest still. Maybe children should fear the dark, they should fear the night. This is what I thought, what I believed. I thought that this was all that Night symbolized, but then I realized: Throughout the book, Elie starts losing more and more and more faith in G-d. What if night symbolizes a world without faith? A world w...

https://collections.ushmm.org/iiif-b/assets/698970

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...