Night

     Elie changed quite a lot from before and after the Holocaust occurred, or even during the Holocaust.  However, I see only one way he changed that is most noticible. The most noticible way he changed was by his belief in God or his religion. In the beginning Elie wanted to be more in touch with his religion and wanted to learn more about it. "Thus began my initiation. Together we would read, over and over again, the same page of Zohar. Not to learn it by heart but to discover within the very essence of divinity." Wiesel first asked his father on who can help him learn Kabbalah but his father says Wiesel is too young to learn it. After his father rejected Wiesel's answer he asks Moishe the Beatle if he could teach him to know more about his religion. That is when Wiesel began his initiation.

    About midway through the book, when Wiesel is in the concentration camp he says different things about God and starts questioning God. This is the time when times have gone completely hard and that is when Wiesek asks God on why he is not helping him and why he isn't stopping anything. "for the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?" Wiesel is asking why God is being silent or is not doing anything and he also says that there was nothing to thank god for since he wasn't helping or doing anything about what is being done to the Jews.

     Towards the end of the book Elie sees that the Rabbi's son tried to ditch him or get rid of him to get a better chance of survival. Elie then realizes that it was an easier way to survive but he really didn't want to do that to his own father. He ends up praying to God to not let him do what Rabbi's son did to his own father. Throughout the entire book he ceased to pray and to believe God was helping them, but now that he has seen somebody turn on their own family he does not want to do the exact same thing.

Night Blog

     After reading this far I wonder if Wiesel's mother and sisters made it out of their concentration camp alive or even reunited with Wiesel and his father. I wonder this because I know that Wiesel made it out alive or else we would have not been reading the book in the first place because he wouldn't be able to make the book if he was dead. So since we know he made it out alive that is why I'm curious if his relatives made it out alive too.

     The most important event in the story Night is when Wiesel and his family leave their hometown and go to a concentration camp. I think it is the most important event because this is where their lives and prespectives change by a lot. When they were first turned into a ghetto in their hometown they still had smiles on their faces and felt not a lot of change in their life, after they left they had a shot new prespectives of everything. Wiesel goes throughout a series of hard events, Wiesel's family is put in a compacted cattle car with most of the people from their town crunched up in there, Wiesel's family gets separated, then everything gets worse from their on. Little by little their humanity or civil rights get taken away and it breaks them down.

     One big way I see the main character Wiesel change is his loyalty to God. As time goes by he loses his faith in God and starts to question Him. "Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?" Pg #33 This quote goes to show that Wiesel didn't think God was doing the right thing and God wasn't doing anything but watching them suffer as they go through these rough experiences. Another way he changes is by him not saying anything when his father gets beat. When his father gets beat Wiesel says he didn't do anything but he thought that before they went to the camps he probably would have tried to help his father. Now he is just accepting everything that is happening and is changing the way he is as a human, the Nazis were taking away his humanity.

Holocaust Aow Impression

     What I have learned from the other articles was money first person experiences of the Holocaust. Most of the other AoWs were about what different experiences different people had in the Holocaust. One AoW was about how a man got to live because he was a technician for the Nazis, they didn't eliminate him because they had no other technicians and he was the only one to do it. Some people didn't make it as lucky as him, they had lost family or have even been a refugee. I have seen other opinions about Nazis who were even Jewish, someone who has been interviewed in the article talked about how they do not hate the Nazis because it would make them as bad as the Nazis.

     One other thing I learned about the AoWs was that some were repeated, or I have seen the same AoW from different people. Not only that but, they all had different explanations for their AoWs. One person would focus on only one of the people's view whom has gone through the Holocaust, and some would look at different experiences of different people. I have also learned that most of the articles were publish last year.

     

Butterfly Thinglink "Night In The Ghetto" Anonymous 1943

Berlin Memorial Blog

     There there are many things that I have not known before this activity or assessment that I now have gained knowledge of. I have my opinions of this activity and here they are.

    I learned that there were a lot of different unfair laws that the Jews had to go through even before they were put to death. The laws first start out bad, but not too bad where it would be horrible to live. However, as the years go by the Jews start to lose all of their civil rights. Working revoked, school revoked, pets taken away, then the last stage is lives condemned to death.

     I think this monument was built for a variety of different reasons. First off, the definition of memorial is a structure to remember important events or people. So the main reason I think the memorial was created was to show the Jews who had survived the Holocaust and the Jews who died respect. I think it was built to show the pity of what horrid things the Jews had to go through and is therefore a monument that is basically to show pity for the Jews. 

     I saw that the number of laws didn't really change much. There was basically no correlation between the laws and the years that went by. One year there might be a lot of laws, then another year there might not be a lot of laws, then the year after it goes back to making a high number of laws. One other thing I noticed about the laws was that the more years that went by, the more harsh the laws became.

     The law that I feel would be the most trouble dealing with would be the one to get everyone who is working and organize their arrest. I can only imagine if one normal day of your life that you wake up, go to school, and once you get back home your dad isn't there and everybody at your house is crying or is depressed. That has got to be one of the worst things that could happen in your life. Losing a loved one is one of the hardest things that could ever happen to you, especially if it has no good reason behind it. Sure some people might think that losing their pet is bad and it is like losing a loved one, but imagine actually losing a loved one. That might seem a little cold hearted from me, but it would be harder to lose a relative than to lose a pet. This is all why I think that would be the hardest law to go through.

     In conclusion, I think that I have learned many things from this activity and will most likely help me in the future if someone ever starts talking about the Holocaust or knows somebody who was in the Holocaust.