8A Night Blog 2018

Reading    Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, and viewing other Holocaust sources, has changed my views on the world. Knowing that such a tragic event like this could occur is horrifying, especially because it was to a certain group of people. Knowing what happened to the Jewish people in the Holocaust is a burden. But understanding is it is harder. Throughout many Jew's lives and stories told, faith is a common similarity. In Night , Elie Wiesel tells us how he loses and gains faith many times. At one point he even said there were, "flames that burned my faith," proving that he lost and had no faith. Towards the end of the memoir, Elie finally is liberated, survives the war, and wins a Nobel Peace Prize. Winning a Nobel Peace Prize just shows how Elie held on to his faith and survived.  Another Holocaust piece, the movie Life is Beautiful , portrays a young boy and his father who go to a concentration camp and try to make the best of it. Throughout the movie, the young b...

Poem: In the beginning there was faith—which is childish; trust—which is vain; and illusion—which is dangerous, Fire! The Fire! Auschwitz… nobody had ever heard that name. The death of God in the soul of a child who suddenly faces absolute evil, Flames that consumed faith, From dreams to ashes, Death of God and soul, Deprivation of the desire to live. Muster your strength, And keep your faith. What are you my God, Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies? I have faith in the Jewish people, In Israel, Let it be given a chance, And those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow.

A common theme in Elie Wiesel’s Night is loss of faith. Many times while Elie is in the concentration camp, he finds himself and other Jews losing faith: “Where is merciful God, where is He?” (64) Some Jews were torn between believing that God would help and not. In some parts of the book Elie was saying the Jewish prayer, Kaddish, which is a prayer for mourning and thanking God, and in other parts, he is being stripped of his faith. In another part in the book, when Elie recites his subparagraph that begins with, “Never shall I forget…” Elie says that he will never forget, “the moments that murdered my god and my soul, and turned my dreams to ashes.” (34) Auschwitz and the other camps have done so much torture to Wiesel, that he doesn’t believe God can help him any more. Without faith, the only thing that keeps him in line is his father.

A woman carries her dead child as nobody stops to help her.

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 n...