Final Blog Post - Leah Toebbe


Of the numerous themes that we have identified in Elie Weisel’s ‘Night,’ the one that I found most intriguing or impactful was the sheer atrocity and inhumanity of the Holocaust. How could someone purposely and willfully end the lives of so many innocent people? How could someone order hundreds of children to be burned alive for something that they have yet to understand? How could someone even on the most basic level, think of someone as lesser than themselves for being Jewish? In Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize Speech he says when speaking about his son, “I remember he asked his father, ‘can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the middle ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?”  In another survivors’ story, Rachael Gleitman’s, she recalls, “There was the SS in a wool coat” . . . “he was already like 60ish. He must already have a granddaughter; doesn’t it cross his mind that these young girls could be the age of his granddaughter? How does he feel? How is he going to live his life later on knowing what he’s doing?” It’s astonishing to hear about how little compassion the SS appeared to have when they watched or even led millions of people to their deaths. Another thing that struck me while watching this interview for the first time was the fact that she saw the SS as a person with a family and a story. I doubt he did the same for her or even thought of her and the rest of the girls as human or worthy of existing. This remains relevant today because though it may seem like an eternity ago, this only happened around 70 years ago. Some survivors are still alive today. They remember, and so should we. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 30, 2019 at 1:07 PM

    Leah,
    You manage to connect your emotions to this blog post very well. I liked the theme about the SS having no compassion. It is also good to remember that the Holocaust was only 70 years ago. Good job.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jane.zOctober 31, 2019 at 5:41 PM

    From Ella:

    This is an amazing final response! It speaks to the many atrocities committed in the Holocaust, leaving me feeling helpless and angry in the first part. It also completely blew me away to realize that this was happening only around 70 years ago! Throughout this study, though I was extremely passionate, I never felt as though it was recent history. Maybe this was because I simply did not want to acknowledge the fact that part of the human race were able to bring themselves to perpetrate genocide in less then a century ago. With this you have succeeded in having me yet again do what this study was for. You have made me question history, in order to correctly recognize and remember all those lost and victims to the Holocaust. This was a sincere and truly great piece to end off our study on the Holocaust!

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