When a young boy is hanged in front of hundreds of camp prisoners in Bena, someone mutters "For God's sake, where is God?" (65) and one has to ask themselves the same question when spending more than a single moment reflecting on that dark period of history in the 20th Century.
Elie Wiesel's Night depicts only a single experience of the Holocaust out of six million souls whose suffering is, to this day, unimaginable. A young boy who experienced such loss notes, at the beginning of his journey was told that, "Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him....Man asks and God replies. But we don't understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we dies. The real answers... you will find only within yourself."(5)
After reading the story of Eliezer, one can only wonder what those answers will be for each of us. What answers will adequately address the horrors of so many people, those who lived through them, those who did not live and those who allowed this great tragedy to occur.
While sitting in class for only a single day, watching a fraction of the injustices that these people suffered through, it was interesting to see how easily history could repeat itself. One might say "Well, the teacher TOLD us to separate ourselves. She TOLD us to segregate according to some random qualifications. She TOLD us to take work that wasn't ours and claim it for our own. Our grades were on the line. What choice did we have?"
Might those be the same kinds of justifications the Germans and Poles and Italians, and French made about their situations as they watched an entire collection of people stripped of their belongings, their homes, their families, and their lives?
Write a response to this blog, integrating quote support from the book, and address your reflections on the class this past Friday. Relate, directly, how you think the Holocaust was able to exist and how it could happen again in spite of everything we know about the past and its history. Explore the Essential Question at the top of this blog, keeping in mind that every one of us has their own interpretation of who and what God or a Higher Power is in our lives. Be sure to keep your response courteous and mindful of others' belief systems while you honor your own take on things.
