Conor Blog Post #4

Before reading Night I did not really understand how horrible the Holocaust was. I knew that millions of innocent people were murdered and tortured, but I did not quite understand why and how someone could do this to other human beings. After reading the memoir Night I really began to understand these things. In Night, Elie explains tells of his time as a victim of the holocaust. The Jews were tortured physically and mentally - yet they kept survival as their goal. One way the Jews were physically tortured was by the Germans limiting their food. The Jews were so starved they behaved like animals when there was a small amount of food to fight over. When Weisel described the death march he was so desperate to live that he thought about leaving his father behind. This shows how much of a toll mentally the Nazis inflicted on the Jews. Wiesel did survive but was a different person when it was over. I learned from reading the book that people were treated as if they were not human and if they were not of use, they were killed without hesitation. If they were unfit for work, they were sent to the gas chamber to be killed. When I saw the gas chambers in the Holocaust Musem and I read about how the Nazis would watch them suffer and die, I was horrified. Seeing the video One Survivor Remembers helped me visualize how the Holocaust affected people other than Elie Wiesel. After reading the book, visiting the museum, and seeing the video, I had so many questions. How could people watch children and adults slowly dying? How could they treat them like dogs forcing them to work themselves to death? How could the Nazis do this? How could they so easily turn almost an entire country against a group of people? I began to imagine how this could occur in our present-day world. By learning why and how the Nazi party was able to become so powerful, we can help prevent something similar that from happening again in the future.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 30, 2019 at 2:35 PM

    Conor,

    Well done on your blog post. Reading Night upset me in similar ways to you, and helped me deepen my understanding of the Holocaust. Watching One Survivor Remembers also helped me see it through a perspective other than Elie Wiesel's. Additionally, your closing point about understanding the Nazi rise to power was a great way to end the paragraph.

    Sincerely,
    Parker

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousNovember 6, 2019 at 7:28 AM

    Conor,

    I really like your post. I enjoyed reading what you learned and how you responded to it. All of your questions made me thing deeply and I reflected on the Holocaust when I read them. Your post was very powerful and inspiring. Thank you

    -priscilla

    ReplyDelete

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