Night

(Intro)
For my first free choice book, I began to read Night by Elie Wiesel. I did a report on Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize Speech, and this book came up when we were researching facts about Elie. That's when I felt the urge to read this book. I have never read a book about WWII, and I only had true knowledge on some aspects of the Holocaust. However, I wanted to learn more. I wanted to learn what it was like in the concentration camps, and even the death camps that were set up all over Europe. I believe I chose the right book with Night. I am very interested to go inside the Holocaust to see what a life was like in the camps and throughout the entire war.

(Middle)
Wow. That is all I can say after reading a good majority of the book. I can't explain the emotions that I have towards this book and towards the Jews who had to go through what Elie and others had to. So far, I have read about the Jews getting rounded up by the Germans, put on a train, and transported to the concentration camps. The concentration camp that Elie went to wasn't a terrible camp. The were treated very fairly, given a good portion of food, and didn't have to work as much as some of the other concentration camps. At that point in the book, I thought Elie was one of the lucky ones who had been taken to a decent camp, when others were forced to struggle. Then, selections came, and Elie and his family, along with many others, were transferred to Auschwitz. Right when they got their, the description of the Holocaust that I more commonly heard came about.

When they got off of the train, the immediately passed the crematory, where they burned bodies to ashes. Then, Elie sees a child get thrown in, who seemed to be still living. The next day, a little boy was hanged, and something terrible happened to that boy. "Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked. ..For more than half an hour [the child in the noose] stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. 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 asking: “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows. . . .” (Wiesel 87). The death of the children symbolizes the death of Elie’s own childhood and innocence. The suffering Elie sees and experiences during the Holocaust transforms his view of the world. Before the war, he cannot imagine questioning his God. Before being taken to this camp and seeing the brutal harm done to children, men, and women, he would never question his core beliefs and values. However after, his innocence has been ripped away, and he has completely changed.

Auschwitz: Extermination Camp for the Jews

 (End)
I am not going to lie, I rooted for Elie and his father the entire time to make it out of the camp alive. The brutal occurrences that took place in Auschwitz made you connect with Elie and all of the others because of the emotional effects that overwhelmed their fading spirits. They had to endure beatings, starvation, freezing cold nights, long, hard, laborious work, and all while watching people die everyday. The pain in unheard of, and no one was ever the same after seeing all of the torture that when on in these death camps. Elie was one of them.

One day, the day after he lost one of his family members, he looked at himself in the mirror for the first time since being taken to the ghettos in his hometown. "One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me" (Wiesel 143). This is a very clear statement in itself, and quite obvious to analyze what Elie was trying to say. Even though the physical war is over, his body is in essence, dead. His soul was killed while experiencing the brutality of the Nazi's. Even though this quote has a very negative tone to it, it symbolizes a metaphoric liberation for Elie. It symbolizes him separating himself from his empty shell that he had gained throughout WWII. Although the image of the corpse will always stay with him, but he has found a sense of identity that will endure beyond the Holocaust.Great book, i recommend it to everyone if you want to learn a little something more about the Holocaust that gives you a first hand account.