Here, Elie is reflecting on his first night in the camp. In his first night, Elie is separated from his mother and his sister forever. In his first night, Elie witnesses children- babies- being thrown into a fiery pit. In his first night, Elie marches closer and closer to what he believes will be his death until he and the other men turn to go to the barracks. The first night alone is enough to traumatize and scar Elie forever, which is exactly what he’s saying here.
I’ll be honest: this is the first book that has made me cry in a while. I cried when the child was hanged, I cried when I found out that Elie would have been saved by the Soviet Army if he stayed in the infirmary, and I cried when Elie’s dad died. Looking back on this passage, I feel like crying once again. Elie was my age when he was forced into Birkenau, and I can’t even begin to imagine experiencing these barbarities now. He has only been there for one night, and already the Holocaust has made a permanent mark on him. Elie hasn’t even experienced the hanging of a child or the death of his father, the worst of what is yet to come. Even now, while writing this story, he still remembers all that happened on the first night, and he will truly never forget the way the horrors he saw affected him. This is why this passage is so important to the novel: we can see how the
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While this subject is very upsetting to hear- proven by my tears- it will guarantee something like the Holocaust will never happen again. As my history teacher always says, history is only relevant to us when it’s personal. Seeing how much Elie was affected by spending one night in a camp has made the Holocaust even more real and personal to me. I finally see how much of a real nightmare it was, and I can only hope this will never happen again for the rest of