Night Chapters 5+6

 Question 7.

“All the earth and universe are God’s!” (67) This is very striking to me, for the last two chapters it described how much Eliezer has lost hope and how he doesn’t believe in god anymore. But then the author decides to keep bringing up the fact that we are all a piece of god and nothing can change that. I think the importance of bringing this topic back up was to change Eliezer into a believer and a preserver. Not only would bringing the topic of God change Eliezers views again it could do as much as keep his father and him alive by keeping faith and having motivation.  Since they had to evacuate Auschwitz it has given them hope that all of the torture they have endured will shortly come to an end because the Russians are liberating the area. And having another factor of hope included would allow Eliezer to do anything.

Another phrase that was intriguing was a metaphor. When Eliezer thought he was suffocating he “tried to rid himself of my invisible assassin” (94). I liked this metaphor a lot because it shows he was trying to rid himself of all the bad and the negative and only focus on the main goal of survival. This is different from before when he claimed he would never have hope again and that God crushed his dreams. That he finally realized there was something holding him back and now he can fight back and survive this madness. I think the author included this because having the main character overcome their obstacles would influence others to do the same. 

NIGHT chapters 3+4

Question 10
While reading chapters 3+4, I came across an intriguing quote “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes” (34). This quotes is significant because it shows how Eliezer has lost his hope, and perseverance and how it can affect their thoughts and decisions. Having lost faith in God and Humanity it has put him into this mind-set that life is against him and that he will only fail. If a person has this type of mind-set they would never prosper or get out of a negative situation. Without hope or goals one may be just playing through the motions with no reason to live, which can make a person depressed.

This quote plays a crucial role in the text for it shows the reader how much despair and hopelessness the character is in. Also it shows how physically and emotionally, being involved in the holocaust is and how it can drastically change a person’s outlook on life. Not only would this be a negative factor in his life it will influence others around him to have negativity in their lives. I don’t think I can relate to how much pain he is put through in this novel, but I can understand that living these stories can make one believe less in greater powers and or God. For the constant let down of being prospered would get the better half of a person and lead to a decrease in hope.  A person may be very religious but still not be prospered from a greater force, but giving up in these forces leads to a decrease in hope and would lead one farther away from their goals. 

Night blog post Chapters 1+2

Questions 10+2

In the first two chapters of  Night, there was one particular quote that made me  question the power of knowledge. When Moishe was explaining the significance of god, it made Eliezer believe that “Every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer” (Wiesel 5).  This quote made me reconsider everything that I ever thought about knowledge and questions. As I was thinking I sought to find the significance and meaning for the author to include this quote in his novel. I realized that this quote is supposed to show the reader that there will always be an answer. Also these beginning chapters where almost identical to the novel Between Shades of Grey while was written in the same style: a story of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. Between Shades of Grey began with Nazis soldiers invading a Jewish Ghetto and allowing people 10 minutes to pack up their stuff, which would be only taken from them later on. 

A connection that I had during these chapters was having them transferred to Auschwitz, and I remember learning about the German Concentration camps in History. Especially in Schindlers List, we saw the worst of the cremation centers and the ovens where they would kill mass amount of people. Luckily Eliezer was not sent to Auschwitz to be put in the ovens, he was there to work, and he had survived. A topic that I found important in these chapters was hope. That people preached that if there was no optimism then there would be no purpose to life and no perseverance to survive these tough times. 

Give Me Your Voices: Holocaust Video

The “Give me your children; Voices from the Lodz Ghetto” video made me realize how real and personal these stories are. The awareness that these children had made me feel compassion, hearing how they felt and how little they could do about it makes me feel extremely lucky to have the life I have. If you think about some of the facts that these people are giving its horrifying, having 160,000 people forced into 1.5 miles of space is inhumane. Some children were writing about how little food they receive, bread every eighth day, and the ration once a month, and a small amount of soup. People today complain about being hungry after not eating a full meal for 5 hours, eating this amount of food is equivalent to having a thin slice of bread every 11 hours.  To hear that the 9 year girl would do anything to survive the war truly breaks my heart, for her to know that she’s in this positions just because she is Jewish. When I heard that when people were forced to wear these yellow Stars of David, confused me because if you just harmed when wearing it why wouldn’t people take it off or just not wear it in the beginning?

 I noticed that German's confiscated Jews' valuables and oppressed their labor. This reminds of Schindler's List when Schindler realizes he can use Jews to do his work and not have to pay them.  He then comes to realize he should be saving the Jews with this power.  This makes me wonder if he was the only one, as this was based on a true story, and how many other Nazi businessmen used Jews and then ended up trying to save them?  Overall watching this video has given me the awareness and the reality of these children’s stories, and has made me compassionate. Also the perservance of these children has astounded me, with the minimal amounts of food and what they had to face daily, amazes me that they never gave up.