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Blog Post #4 - Sylvie

Before I read Night , before I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, before I watched One Survivor Remembers , and before I learned that 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust, I could never have imagined mankind cabable of such a horrendous act. I experienced such a whirlwind of emotions as I read Night ; Wiesel’s book made me feel so much sadness, but I also felt empowered. Reading Night made me question what I would have done if I was living during the time of the Holocaust. Would I have been as brave? Would I have survived. I can not even begin to fathom the tremendous amount of strength it took for the Jews to fight back and keep the will to survive. Knowing that people have gone through such loss and hardship, I feel as if I can do anything. In one of the most powerful statements from Night , Wiesel writes, “Yet another last night. The last night at home, the last night in the ghetto, the last night on the train, the last night in Buna.” I find this statement to ...
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Blog Post #4- James

Our studies of the Holocaust this past month have completely changed my perspective on the subject. I did not fully understand the brutality and inhumanity of it all. I only treated it factually, but the memoir Night , the Holocaust Museum and the many other primary sources we have learned from have showed the emotional aspect of the Holocaust that I was lacking. For instance, when writing about his entry into the Auschwitz concentration camp, Elie Wiesel is filled with pain, and emotion, things that help one truly empathize with the victims of the Holocaust. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed....Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never” (22). There is such power in his words because of his profound, poetic st...
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Prompt #2-Night Blog Post #4- Myles Peyton Holloway

Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night introduced many important themes as it progressed. One of the most important themes of the book was faith which significantly altered Elie’s perception of humanity. Learning about Elie’s relationship with God and a higher power was so powerful that it made me question my own beliefs. Elie’s main question throughout the book was basically that if there is such a God with infinite power, why would he allow something this terrible to occur? Sadly, the question is never answered in the book, (and I’m not sure if anyone can answer this) but the message that I learned from it was that good goes around. Since Elie looked out for his father throughout his whole journey, Elie was blessed enough to survive. This is important because it ties in with the role of luck in the novel. The roles of faith and luck are constantly counteracting each other in the book. Elie discusses multiple incidents where his family could’ve been saved, or Elie himself could’ve died a lot earl...
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Blog Post #4- Jared

For the time that I have been studying the Holocaust, it has been a good learning experience. I have learned of the great inhumane actions of the Nazis and the Jews uprising and escaping. In the book Night I learned what it was like in a concentration camp. I learned what the inhumane acts of the Nazis were and what they did towards the Jewish people. The things that the Nazis did are unimaginable. They would burn people alive and kill them in gas chambers. In the book, Elie says that they would burn babies in a pit or use them as target practice. They would also cram 80 to 100 people in a tiny box car without food or water for a long time. Towards the end of the war, Nazi officers forced prisisnoers to run for 3 months in snow, and if they didn't keep the pace they would get shot. This matters because over 6 million Jews died in the holocaust and over 11 million people died in the war. Over half of the jews in all of Europe died. In Elie Wiesel's Nobel acceptance speech, he sa...
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Post #4 Mary Adams

One of the major themes in our study of the Holocaust was the idea of faith. It is referenced many times in the memoir Night. I felt that I was impacted by this particular theme because the Catholic faith is a big part of my family’s culture. In my mind, the idea of a person losing faith in the midst of a traumatic experience is one of the most important ideas in this memoir. I think that that is a fascinating topic, and I wonder if the psychology behind it has ever been studied, or if it should be studied. Before reading Night, I had always thought that a person would keep their faith close to them during a time of crisis. This was not the case with Elie Wiesel, who not only abandoned his faith, but questioned why others hadn’t. But then, 40 years later, as part of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he tells the public how he had regained his faith. He tells us that there would be no action without God (speaking of Judaism). I think it is impressive that Elie was able to regain...
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Blog Post #4 - Marco

While studying the Holocaust, I have seen one important theme showing up in many stories: luck. People had no control over their own lives. Everything that went on around them was all based on luck. For every missed opportunity, they could change nothing. People didn't know what would happen to them, their belongings, or their family. Anything could happen- they could be given extra soup, or be forced to work more, or get sick and die. For example, in One Survivor Remembers, Gerda Weissman’s father makes her wear ski boots when she was taken away, which was silly at the time, as it was summer. However, these boots proved crucial to her survival, as during the death marches, she had warm boots while other girls were wearing sandals. Another example is, in Night, Elie and his father decide to move on in a death march rather than staying in the camp hospital they were in at Buna. However, they later learned that it was liberated by the Russian Army right after they left. Also, Elie ha...
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Julia- Final Blog Post

One of the biggest themes we have gone over is faith. In every book, movie, or video that we’ve seen, one of the main threads is the loss or gain of faith. This can be seen in Night. As the memoir progresses, we see Elie slowly start to lose faith in God. His loss of faith stuck with me. It upsets me that someone could be so cruel that they could make someone with Elie’s belief and reliance on God question their faith. It’s striking that someone could be hopeless enough to lose faith in God. Even more striking is when Elie says that he has more faith in Hitler, than in anyone else. His faith in Hitler makes me take a step back. For someone to believe in Hitler more than God makes me downhearted. It means Hitler followed through with his promises to do the awful things he did. To have faith in Hitler is one of the most terrible, yet understandable things during the Holocaust. While Elie still feels regret towards doubting God, his belief in God is supplemented by his in Hitler. He someh...
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