'Night' 2nd Entry

Changes over Time

Compared to other Holocaust novels and stories I have read, Night was the one I liked best. Not only does it make you ponder deeply, but it shows how a person (either child or adult) changes; from the moment when he/stepped into the Concentration camp, till the end, in Eliezer’s case, when liberated, but rather as a body with a lack of soul.

It did shock me, specially towards the end, when Eleizer started describing death as something provocative, and so appealing. “Death wrapped itself around me till i was stifled. It stuck to me. I felt that I could touch it. The idea of dying, of no longer being, began to fascinate me. Not to exist any longer. Not to feel the horrible pains in my foot. Not to feel anything, neither weariness, nor cold, nor anything.” (Page 82)

I’m not saying that suddenly Eliezer turned suicidal. Maybe he did, but I would totally have agreed whit him, should I find myself in his shoes. At first, as every other Jew entering this “concentration camp live” along with him, they are scared.

All throughout the book, Eliezer’s goal, in the concentration camps, is to never be away from his father—to no matter what, always be together. This is, obvious, since a child tends to stay among the ones he/she feels safe with—specially in this kind of ‘things’.

“Our first act as free men, was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread.” (Page 109)

Rather eating over your family—though revenge is not as important—is certainly dreadful. Yet, when talking about Eleizer, we have to take into consideration everything that he has been through. I guess an environment, the way as it is, influences the people within it, turning them into this “way of being”. Eliezer may have not become evil, yet, he simply stopped loving, missing, feeling, crying, as most of the Jews, because of the lack of these in the first place, within their environment. Plus, the morality of people was replaced by something stronger—hunger and thirst. Even revenge, definitely deserved by the Nazis, was put aside.

It is much that changes, what the crematories mean for the Jews. After the 1st ‘selection’, Eleizer feared the crematories, and when the SS soldiers started making him along with some other walk towards the crematories, he wants to avoid the situation as much as he can, and even thinks of other ways of dying, rather than burning. “Four steps more. Three steps. There it was now, right in front of us, the pit and its flames. I gathered all that was left of my strength, so that I could break from the ranks and throw myself upon the barbed wire.” (Page 31)

So, killing yourself, by running at full speed towards barbed wire doesn’t sound appealing. But it was Eliezer’s choice—over slow and painful death, within the flames.

Then, after spending much more time within the camps, as the Jews start feeling less, each time, caring less about anything and only really wanting to eat, rather than survive, it is insignificant if they see the crematories or not; they meant the same thing, as any other block, since, pessimist now, the Jews, or at least Eliezer, was sure he was somehow going to die—whether ‘now or later’.

So, the book did make me think deeply about Eliezer’s life, and the treats put to it. It affects me so, because he is almost my age—15—therefore making me feel more ‘linked’, like his reactions and thought would be similar to mine. Though I sometimes doubt that. We shall never know, what the victims truly felt, and how to describe it, as we have never felt it, and hope we never will.