Night


"We were all going to die here. All limits had been passed. No one had any strength left. And again the Night would be long."


Night was a powerful story of real-life tragedy. Elie had this way of captivating me into his story making me want to read deeper and deeper into Night. At the same time talking about these tragic losses and deaths, the brutal whippings and hangings made me so emotional. However, at the same time I couldn’t put it down.


Reading Night I was taken aback about how fast humans can transform. For example, their experience with Mrs. Schächter I thought it was amazing how she basically saw what was coming for them, but they just kept beating her! And it all had just begun. They were already changed souls, but were they men, or just a corpse?


Several weeks and months pass, they're emotionless from their surrounding, it's nothing new, just the same 'ol same 'ol. As Elie said "Was there a single place here where you were not in danger of death?" Friends, family, neighbors are all dying and no one even looks back, they keep going on. Trying not to get themselves killed, all of a sudden morals didn't even matter, it was really just survival of the fittest. Weisel's father was calling for him asking for water, he was dying, getting beat, begging to know WHY they were hitting him. However while dying and getting beat, Elie wouldn’t answer thinking he would've gotten hit as well.


They all only thought of themselves anymore. They were just innocent civilians who got plucked from their homes, most of them which were taken to their death beds for no reason. Besides their beliefs. "I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time."


Of course I can’t relate to this experience thousands had, nevertheless I can try understanding it. Putting into consideration this happening to me. Would I have just walked away impassive after watching my friends and family dying? "But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like-free at last!" Or would I have let the S.S take me too, with perceptive, I’m nothing without them, how I unconditionally love them, they're my source of happiness, my life. Would've I been bothered as thousands people were getting taken to the crematoria, knowing what was going to happen to them? Seeing infants getting thrown in the air then shot like flying targets. Would this life really have grown to be so second nature to me as quickly? Seeing such terrible things around me, would I really have not taken a second look? It's all practically unimaginable.


Throughout Night I couldn’t help to stopping and thinking to myself, was this honestly real?!Elie’s explanation ("Do you see that chimney over there? ...Over there-that's where you're going to be taken. That's your grave, over there.") of the crematoria, the camps, the experience, the record itself almost seemed like a falsified horror story, not a non-fictional autobiography of a factual horrifying experience so many blameless beings endured. Thinking HOW is that possible that this could have happened? It really made me realize the ruthlessness of humans when under a 'spell' of being ("I've got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He's the only one who's kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.") by the very terrible man Adolf Hitler. In the end the message being: this evilness and hatred and vindictiveness of humans can never be allowed to happen again.

"From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me."