8A Night Blog 2018

This experience of the Holocaust affect me on an emotional level. Before this experience I did not know much about the Holocaust I just had heard of horrible man named Adolf Hitler and the genocide he had created. After reading the book Night and after the documentaries and films that we watched I've been slapped by reality. I've been dwelling a lot on my own as well, about how people could have so much hatred on the people who are their neighbors. Just ordinary people that have so much hatred. I'm just so confused how people could just back stab their neighbors as soon as a new political party rose. Ordinary people turning into monsters you don't see that everyday. I've taken away so many things from this unit. I think the thing that just draws me the most from in this unit is to never forget. So many innocent people died just because of what they practiced and what they look like. So the least I can do is memorialize them by never forgetting what happened to them....

The Night Always expected The paralyzing silence Voices silencing and breaking But the Night Such a blessing Shielding the innocents from monsters Monsters that perhaps were once human The monsters hated the night Going back from were they came from under the cover of Night In the morning hell awakened Forced to live in this living hell The devil's themselves awakened No love No family Every man for himself Back to the Night All hope was in the Night The monsters slept in the Night Everyone slept Either for the Night or forever Everyone slept In the perfect Night

Hope The most important theme I have identified is loss and gain of hope. It is repetitively brought up throughout the memoir in every stage of Elie’s life throughout the Holocaust. Eliezer recalls the Jews kept hope on the death marches. They kept hope that the Russians would come soon and end the pain “There was whispering from one bunk to the other; with a little luck, the Russians would be here before the evacuation. Hope was still alive.” (83). Elie also says that the overseers of Auschwitz tell the Jews not to lose hope. Elie recounts the overseer saying this on page (41) “ "Comrades, you are now in the concentration camp Auschwitz. Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering. Don't lose hope. You have already eluded the worst danger: the selection. Therefore, muster your strength and keep your faith. We shall all see the day of liberation…”  Even in the hardest situations Elie had hope. Hope is also mentioned when Elie discusses the matter of food. Eliezer h...

Caption: An SS soldier stands among ruins in the Warsaw ghetto during the suppression of the uprising. Link:  https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa5228 This photograph conflicts me. On one half I see and understand that this photograph was taken as a trophy or memento of the victory of the uprising in Warsaw Ghetto. Even though the caption says it was a part of a victory album, for some reason it does not look like a victory to me. I see that the SS soldier has regrets because of the destruction and murder he has caused. I think I see the human coming out of the SS soldier, but I might hallucinating seeing the human inside of a brainwashed monster. Someone who perhaps was once human.

I found the topic Irony to be one of the most poignant because the Jews are clueless to the fact the Nazis are doing horrible things, just because they think that the Nazis are not different from them. And they think that they are ordinary people and that they would not do something horrible like genocide and enslavement. Even though it has happened before in history just like how the Africans were taken from their country and forced to work in Europe and the Americas. Also like the Native Americans who were stripped from their homeland and murdered because they were in the way European works. What's most ironical to me is that in their own religion, a story in their past was that their people were enslaved in Egypt, and they were forced to be slaves, and were murdered. Im assuming they really don't think that this could happen again even though it's happened in their past. Wiesel even mentions in his book on page (40) “What irony.” That passages affects my way of thinking ...