My symbol was the block. I thought this represented the ghettos and living spaces in the camps. My first detail is that Elie stayed in a ghetto when he first got involved in the war. “Two ghettos were created in Sighet.” (Wiesel 11)
The way the officers treated the Jews made them feel like they weren't human anymore, and no better than inanimate objects. “You...you...you…” They pointed their fingers, the way one might choose cattle, or merchandise” (49). The officers acted as if the task of deciding who lived and who died was easy and required almost no thought. Again, the jewish people are not only compared to as dogs, but as merchandise.
“Every few yards, there stood an SS man, his machine gun trained on us. Hand in hand we followed the throng.” ( pg. 29) Eliezer's instinct for survival outweighs everything else. Although Eliezer and his family did not want to go to Auschwitz, they went because they were threatened if they did not comply. The SS guards would have killed anyone who did not follow orders, so they left their home and everything they have every known in order to survive.
The quote is important to Elie’s experiences because it shows the severity of what he had been through while inside of the wagon. Having One hundred men crammed inside a single cart and only twelve remaining is a significant difference. It’s important to his experiences because out of all those who died, he and his father managed to come out alive. However, since his father was so old Elie had to help him survive by putting him first and protecting him when others thought he was dead. This quote is important to the book as a whole because it shows how normalized death was for the Jewish people, it shows how disposable the Jews were to the Nazis.
1- Elie Wiesel is comparing the soup to the taste of corpses because before they went to get their soup to eat, they watched the hanging of three bodies, two men and a child. They had to watch the light child struggle for life in the noose, watching him for half an hour up close until he died, no one wanted to see a child get hanged at an age like that. I feel that the emotions Elie is trying to communicate with us is extreme sadness and sorrow not only because of the death of the two prisoners, but because of the death of the boy. This quote to me, means that because of what he saw up close and for a half an hour, the 13 year old boy trying to cling to his life in the noose, had left a bad taste in his mouth for the soup.
In the middle of the book, the theme that the bystander and the tormentor are equally guilty for the offense created is shown in a section about how Elie Wiesel himself had become a bystander. This happened when his father was slapped by an SS officer. Instead of helping, on page 39 Elie had become the people who he despised, and stood and watched his father. This quote shows the theme because it shows that Elie is acknowledging that he was a bystander with the question “What had happened to me?” Although the quote does not say that he is equally guilty, it can be inferred from the fact that Elie could have done something to help his father, whether that was defending his father before, or helping his father after.
Q5: After I read this book, this made me understand how much the Jews has struggled in the camps. Before I read this book, I thought the concentration camps is where Jews had to work until there numbers on their arm would be called out to get killed. They would killed them only by using the gas chambers which that wasn't the case at all. A lot of Jews were killed by machine guns. Babies were used as target practices for shooting.
Night Response Journals Response #1 “The time has come...you must all leave” (Officers page 16). At this time in Elie and his family, friends and other resident are being escorted out of the harsh ghetto. People are getting dragged out of their homes person by person, some people get to stay longer than others.
"I tried to distinguish between the living and those who were no long more. But there was barely a difference" (Page 98). As Elie describes his surroundings he gives readers a good image of how bloody everything was, and how the people living were being treated as well. Despite living like the walking dead, Jew’s continued to fight until they eventually lose all the faith and hope stored inside themselves.
Grace Trost Night by Elie Wiesel March 30, 2015 Book 1. I would've said to him,"If there really is a God then he would send mercy as it is necessary, but if there isn't then what is the point of wanting to die to escape this place because if you see death as a relief because you would be going to heaven, but if there is no God then there is no heaven to go to. You just have to hang on and believe that God will save you when the time is right. God is just testing our faith and we need to stay strong so that he will have the joy of going to heaven and being with him once this is all over.
Prologue The Holocaust was a tragedy that happened in the 1940’s . It took around 11 million lives, 6 million of them being Jews. The victims of the Holocaust went through hell. They were starved, beat, and separated from their families.
Elie and the other prisoners are fully exposed to the horrible inhumanity of the Nazis. Due to the brutal methods of the Nazis, they are transformed from respected individuals into obedient, animal-like automatons.
1. “They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns.”
He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me, I heard the same man ask: ‘Where is god now?’”(Wiesel 42) Elie realized that God was hanging on a gallows, that he was no longer with them, that he had abandoned them.
Elie saw a sight that he could never forget, that he could never erase from his mind. He saw the sight of babies being used as targets for the soldiers and of being being burned and piled on top of one another as if they did not matter. Not only him but other people witnessed this sight as well. People that were too young or too old to do work were brought into “showers” that were actually gas chambers. But even people that did meet the age and health requirements were brought into chambers as well, but they were brought to the ones where they could actually.
