Night Personal Response Copy

Night - Personal Response
Word Count: 981

Night

Freedom. At some point in our lives we have all wanted a certain freedom. Whether it is freedom to do as you please or freedom to go explore the world. Though, most of us never got the chance to be free, and some of us might never have that chance. The book we studied in class is a classic memoir written by Elie Wiesel, a unforgettable novelist, titled Night. In this memoir Elie Wiesel is writing about his past life as a prisoner in a Jewish concentration camp along with his family. Wiesel writes about how he had suffered from being kicked out of his home in Sighet, having to split apart from his mother and his sister, Tzipora, and having to continue on to the next location with only his father by his side. Wiesel wrote about his tragedies whilst in the concentration camps; how he and his father were treated like animals because of their religion; getting beat up and abused each day. At first, reading the memoir did not interest me at all, I was bored within the first two chapters, however as I started reading more of the book I became more and more intrigued in his life tragedies. Reading about the awful events that had occurred in Wiesels’ childhood I felt heartbroken, no child or even adults should ever feel that much pain and depression from others, it is not right to be treated in such ways. I will be writing a personal response to the Elie Wiesels ‘Night’.

“Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.” (Wiesel, p.34) Those were the words that Elie Wiesel spoke at his first night in Auschwitz. I chose this quote as I thought it was a moment where Wiesel had fully expressed the anger inside of him. This quote stood out to me not only because it was a moment of anger for Wiesel, but also because whilst reading it I felt as if I could feel the emotion through the memoir. Reading the words ‘Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul’ made me upset as I myself am religious and would be furious if such events happened in my life and ruin my relationship towards God and my soul. To conclude I would say that this quote is quite powerful and has a deep meaning.

‘What can we expect? It’s war...’ (Wiesel, p.3) I chose this quote from the novel because as I was reading it I thought to myself ‘did Wiesel not try to do anything about the fact that it is war, were Wiesel and his family and his neighbors just going to sit there not doing anything about it?’ then I read on, and realized that there really wasn’t much that any one of them could do, and that if they had tried they would have been killed, no questions asked. The quote also made me think a lot about what there really is to expect from war, all I could think of was how it was terrible what had happened to all the Jews and how it was unfair to do such awful things in this war. To conclude, this quote really made me think about what there is to expect from a war, and whether to expect something bad or if something good would come out of it in the end.

‘I told him that I could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the world would never tolerate such crimes.’ (Wiesel, p.33) Reading the quote I felt upset thinking how the Germans back then could do such a thing without a blink of an eye, and how un-human and cruel it was. I then thought about how prisoners are often the ones who burn other prisoners and the thought of burning a relative or a young one made me feel disgusted. I would despise ever having to do such a thing. To conclude this quote, I think that during that time, the nazis had no humanity within themselves, to not spare an innocent child's life, with out even hesitating is just shocking.

‘One day I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.
From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating back at me.
The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.’ Instead of using a quote from the memoir I decided to use the last passage written by Wiesel.’ (Wiesel, p.115) I chose this because I thought it was a very powerful ending to the memoir as it refers back to the terrible events that had occurred and how miserable he must have been through the Holocaust. Wiesel was a free man at the end and honestly, I think that’s all that really matters because he went through so much pain and suffering thinking every second that he might not live to see the next day, and to finally reach the end and realizing that there will be no more horrific events happening must be the best feeling he could have had.

To conclude the response, I thought the memoir would not be interesting at all and that it would honestly just be a bore to read, though I am glad to say I was wrong about the memoir. I turned out to really like reading about Wiesels past. Reading through the chapters was quite interesting because not only did I get to read about a prisoner in a concentration camp but I also got to be educated about WW1 events.