Elie Wiesel - Transformation

A traumatic event like the Holocaust, the slaughter of millions of Jews, would certainly leave some scars behind. It can also change one's personality: their beliefs, their morals, etc., usually for the worse.

The same happened to Elie Wiesel, along with countless other Jews.

The first notable change that happens to him is the shift in his beliefs. After he bare witness to the horrors at Auschwitz during his first night, he begins to believe that God is dead. Elie used to be a very religious person, who aspired to be a cabbala, one who studies the Torah. Seeing was believing for him then: but not in God.

"Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust."

Later on, he admits that he does not doubt God's existence, but doubts His overall authority.


While spending time in camp, Elie and the other prisoners are quickly stripped of their humanity. They are malnourished, only being given 1,700 calories worth every day, while being forced to do labor. Additionally, they are forced to sleep in cramped bunk beds with no blankets. Their clothes are thin and itchy. Living conditions at the camps weren't all that great, and that's an understatement. By the end of the book, many of the prisoners think only of survival, while many others give up, sleep, and never wake up. The survival-minded would step on their own parents to accomplish their goal. Elie falls victim to these feelings, but his bond with his father does not break. He regains his emotions whenever his father gets in trouble (is on the brink of death). This changes when his father finally dies from weakness caused by dysentery combined with a single bludgeon from a truncheon. Elie no longer has anything to connect to being human other than his emaciated body until the liberation.

Night - Chlomo Wiesel

In the non-fiction story Night, Eliezer states that Chlomo, his father, rarely showed any emotion, and that he was more concerned with others' situations than with his own family's.

It seems like this changes when they arrive at the first concentration camp. During the selection, he is eager to stay with his son. As they get separated from the girls of their family, who die right after, their bond tightens, determined to stay alive.

They stayed together until Buna, where the were separated for a while. Elie manages to get his father into the same unit as him shortly after, though, and stays with him at all times. Despite that, Elie does not interfere when his father is beat up at the warehouse, possibly due to his inhumanity slowly crawling into the bond he has with his father, or fear of being beat up as well.

On the way to Buchenwald, Chlomo becomes weaker, and needs to rely on his son more. In Buchenwald he contracts dysentery, and completely relies on Elie, like their roles were reversed as father and son; he was retrieved from the snow by Elie, is assisted by Elie to move, and is kept away from trouble by Elie. He has grown so weak, the other prisoners believe that it would be better to steal his ration of food since he would inevitably die soon.

And, they were correct. While resting in the block, Chlomo kept asking Elie for water. He could not comply, so Chlomo went on, when a guard heard him, and ordered him to be quiet. He didn't listen. Soon, the guard had enough of it, and bashed his face with a truncheon.

Chlomo's last word was, "Eliezer."

Holocaust AoW Impressions

Last Friday, I've heard a lot of stories from in-class sharing of articles related to the Holocaust. Well, except for three people having the same article to share, but I still got something new from each account.

I will start by talking about the story that three people in the class had to share. Israel has been refusing to provide aid for Syrian refugees, and it isn't sitting well for Holocaust survivors, who were once in the same situation. They have been demanding that Israel, as well as other countries, help the refugees immediately. The article in which the story was told was titled Holocaust survivors demand Israel help refugees, and was published on September 10, 2015.

The story I find most interesting is that of Oskar Groening, former Auschwitz guard accused of 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, which means that he has assisted 300,000 murders. Oskar himself feels moral guilt, but denies that he has directly assisted any of these murders. He says that any of his decisions as an Auschwitz guard were of the Nazi state, and he does not consider himself accountable for them.

Butterfly Project Thinglink

Berlin Memorial Reflection

Years before the Second World War, the first anti-Semitic laws were established.

These first laws mostly took trivial privileges from Jews, aside from a few others refusing reimbursement for Jewish doctors and the expulsion of Jewish civil servants. Further along the line, though, the laws established become more punishing, with the Nuremberg Laws stripping Jews of their nationality.

There were even prohibitions on graduation, and eventually all sorts of schooling for Jews. You couldn't even buy a book in 1942. Personally, that would be the hardest to cope with if I was a Jewish person in that time period. I am a recluse, and I prefer not to interact with people (since it bothers me and I'm bad at it), so my usual time-killers are video games or books. Video games outside of arcades were non-existent at that time, meaning I would only be able to read books to spend time. Without books, I would suffer in that scenario.

In 1938, more anti-Semitic laws were made with the purpose of isolating the Jewish population, possibly for easier targeting. A few years later, Jews were essentially deprived of food and other necessities. All of the documents recording these laws were destroyed in 1945, when Germany was defeated.

In years of importance, up to ten or more laws were passed, specifically during 1933, the year Hitler rose to power;  1938, the year before the invasion of Poland; and 1942, the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Many, many years later, in memorial of the Holocaust, over 80 signs with the anti-Semitic laws from 1933-1943 written on them are propped onto lampposts in Berlin. It's been hard trying to look for any written information regarding these signs, so I can only assume what the purpose of these signs are. My best guess for this is that these signs were meant to remind people of the cruelty of the Nazi Party to Jews. They warn people that this happened once, and it could happen again, unless we stop it.