The horrors that Jewish and other groups of people faced during the Holocaust were tragic. Ihe book Night, by Elie Wiesel follows his struggle through life as a Jew in this time and place. His whole world was flipped around when Germans invaded his home, and through the tragic events he witnessed, he watched the people around him become less and less human, going into survival mode. He managed to survive, and wrote this book about what he experienced. Some of the atrocities that the Jewish people faced were living in horrible conditions, being starved and beaten, or being tortured and executed. When Elie was first transported from his home in the cattle cars, he was trapped for days, packed in tight with no room to move there was so many people.
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They were mercilessly killing them left and right. If they did not make the cut, shot. If they disobeyed, hanged. If they became sick or injured, off to the gas chamber and then later the crematorium. “Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes… children thrown into the flames. (Is it any wonder that ever since then, sleep tends to elude me?)” (Wiesel 32) This happened at the first camp Wiesel arrived at. Women and children were burned immediately. People who were very strong were assigned to clean the crematoriums. There was another part in the book where Wiesel describes the hanging of a child. The boy helped a man who trying to carry out some rescue mission for the Jews, but was caught. The details of the hanging were gruesome, and it was a huge hit on everyone watching the small child die. “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.” (Wiesel 65) The things that the soldiers had to do, how much blood they shed for their country, it seems inhuman, like a story. But to the Jewish people in those camps, it was all too
They were mercilessly killing them left and right. If they did not make the cut, shot. If they disobeyed, hanged. If they became sick or injured, off to the gas chamber and then later the crematorium. “Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes… children thrown into the flames. (Is it any wonder that ever since then, sleep tends to elude me?)” (Wiesel 32) This happened at the first camp Wiesel arrived at. Women and children were burned immediately. People who were very strong were assigned to clean the crematoriums. There was another part in the book where Wiesel describes the hanging of a child. The boy helped a man who trying to carry out some rescue mission for the Jews, but was caught. The details of the hanging were gruesome, and it was a huge hit on everyone watching the small child die. “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.” (Wiesel 65) The things that the soldiers had to do, how much blood they shed for their country, it seems inhuman, like a story. But to the Jewish people in those camps, it was all too