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)
“I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked.” (Wiesel 39) In chapter 3 it’s discussing how what happened and what has changed as Elie and his father had been going through the process of selection.
This passage is set when the Jews finally arrive at the concentration camp. The first thing they see, pointed out by Mrs. Schachter, is the flames rising from the camp, presumably from the crematorium. I found this quote to be very chilling, and it struck me. Imagine travelling for days on end, with no idea where you’re going, and you’re stuck in a cattle car with at least eighty other people. Suddenly, you arrive at your destination, only to see flames and smell burning flesh.
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.
1. After the hanging of a child, Elie hears someone say, “‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows…’ That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (Wiesel 65). Though optimistic at first, Elie Wiesel, along with many others at the concentration camps, began to lose faith in God.
1. “For nearly an hour, she remained...till Papa came home and played the accordion. Only then did she sit up and start to recover.” - Liesel finds comfort and safety in her foster father. She trusts him and is happy when around him; two important aspects of any relationship, especially a family relationship.
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.
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.”
1a.) - a. The missed chances have shown me how there are always a few opportunities to choose between, but there is always a different outcome for each side. The book states, “In those days it was possible to buy emigration certificates to Palestine” (Wiesel 8-9). With this opportunity, Elie could have fled to Palestine, but he chose not to.
To introduce the image and the book I’m going to say what means the interplay between satisfaction (fulfillment of one's expectation needs or wants pleasure) and regret (feeling sad or reprentant over something that has happened). What we can break down from these two words towards the book is that at every moment of history it can be observed that there have been moments of satisfaction such as when father and son passed the test to avoid being sent to the gas chamber or when they receive a piece of bread to be able to feed themselves, on the other hand, the other person has been able to hand, you can also see that they go through moments of regret such as when they are separated from their mother and sister “Men to the left”. Women to the right!” (page 29), or in the last moments of their father's life.
Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” “(Wiesel pg 66).” Elie asks these questions as he sees more innocents peoples death thinking that surely if god is the master of the universe he should help but he doesn't and elie takes this as a sign of cowardness. More questions arrived to elies mind as people started to praise his god asking “Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him?
Regarding Elie’s experiences, his powerlessness is what I’ll most remember in this book. What I believe I’ll remember most about this novel is Elie's powerlessness. It’s inevitable, yes, but putting myself in his shoes, I wouldn’t have managed it as well as Elie had. An image that will stick with me is of Jews having to live in unfair living conditions based on their culture or religion. The wars that have happened—genocide, torture, and murder—I believe will never end.
To find a man who has not experienced suffering is impossible; to have man without hardship is equally unfeasible. Such trials are a part of life and assert that one is alive by shaping one’s character. In the autobiographical memoir Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, this molding is depicted through Elie’s transformation concerning his identity, faith, and perspective. As a young boy, Elie and his fellow neighbors of Sighet, Romania were sent to Auschwitz, a macabre concentration camp with the sole motive of torturing and killing Jews like himself. There, Elie experiences unimaginable suffering, and upon liberation a year later, leaves as a transformed person.
