The theme I identified was inhumanity throughout the Holocaust. I learned about so many horrible and tragic events that happened in the Holocaust. Like death marches which were just unbearable to hear and how cruel they were to the Jews. How they had the mindset to kill and not to care. How this time period seemed so far from reality hearing it now. To be killing Jews for without a purpose and just to kill them all off was very shocking. This topic matters so much because we have to prevent events similar to the Holocaust from ever happening again. Apart from violence the words spoken to Jews and not even identifying that they were human. We have to remember this because so many people died for believing in their own religion. To be transported to different concentration camps from family and probably never seeing them again. The conditions in these camps were terrible with many Jews dying everyday because they were incapable of doing work or just being killed was harsh. The standard...

My experience with the studying of the Holocaust was deep. It impacted my feelings, dreams, thoughts, and emotions. Over the month I learned about the torture and suffering of the Holocaust. I also learned the struggles, the thoughts and the overall story of the ones in it. Now, this topic altogether has huge significance. It’s mainly taught for making sure it never happens again, and to inform all kids on what happened at this time in history. I’m one of those kids that got that privilege to learn and I have learned a lot. We went from auto-biographies and interviews to going to the museum and videos. This taught me to take things and treasure them because of me having them. It also made me watch out more and watch how I say and/or portray my thoughts or feelings. Night the novel we read by Elie Weisel was very touching and “painful” to read. It had me on the verge of tears and kept me wondering why. We wrote multiple blog posts on the novel (one of which you are reading now) and ...

I am both connected and impacted by the theme of faith that is shown throughout the course of the book. Coming from a Catholic household, I have always been taught how to do what God would do, and love and praise him. I would get scared to not finish the sign of the cross after praying, get paranoid if I didn’t pray at night, and would feel bad if I didn’t go to church at least once a week. Even with all of that stress of completing all these tasks that I was told I was supposed to do, I never thought that anyone would have good reason to turn against their god. That was, until I read night. After reading “Should we fast? The question was hotly debated. To fast would mean a surer, swifter death. We fasted here the whole year round. The whole year was Yom Kippur. But others said that we should fast simply because it was dangerous to do so. We should show God that even here, in this enclosed hell, we were capable of singing His praises.” (Wiesel p. 38) I realized just how easily people w...

One theme in Night that really impacted me in Night was the theme of losing faith and feeling hopeless. Throughout my reading of the book, I kept debating with myself if I would have kept faith in God or if I would have lost faith and felt betrayed or disregarded like some of the people in Night , I still don’t know. Before reading Night  I hadn’t even given much thought to whether or not victims felt hopeless. Although after finishing Night I realize how important this was. Beliving God was there or believing you are all alone could alter your choices. It changed your mindset. If you kept faith, you might believe that if you waited and if you prayed that God would save you. You might think that the Holocaust was a test to see if you would keep believing in God. Some people in Night did think this and tried to keep everyone else faithful. Although if you believed God had left you, you might think more on the terms of everyone for themselves as Elie did in Night . Everyone feels...

Identity was a theme that had a great impact on me. At the beginning of Night Elie’s identity is that of an innocent child, a student of Talmud, and a devout Jew. But the concentration camp experience strips him (and his fellow Jewish prisoners) of his identity. Elie’s hair was shaved, he was dressed like all of the other prisoners, and while facing the atrocities of the camp, he loses his innocence and his faith in God. Elie and all of the other prisoners are given numbers instead of names. They are no longer individuals, but prisoners, or “creatures”, and eventually simply just bodies. In Night   I learned the importance of being young and strong to be able to survive in a camp . In today’s world identity is important because it’s what differentiates every single one of us. Having a strong sense of identity seems to be desirable because it can help make decisions and teach us how to behave. For example, my parents are from The Gambia but I do not identify as an African. Althoug...

My experience in studying the Holocaust was filled with different emotions of sadness, anger, and sorrow.  I felt sadness for the stories about the splitting up of families, children thrown in fires, and women breaking off their toes.  I felt anger towards the Nazis for manipulating children into their own beliefs and killing people just because they were different.  If we kill people because they are different, in my opinion, everyone would die because all of us are different in our own way. That’s what makes us special and that's what got us to where we are today, which is the opposite of what the Nazis believed.  I also felt sorrow for the victims, the family members, and generations of Jewish people. The most important part of what I learned was to honor and never forget. We have to honor what the victims and survivors went through and what they saw. After all the pictures and videos and even after visiting the Museum, I can't wrap my head around what happene...

Before our unit of the Holocaust, I didnt fully understand how brutal this time period was. In the book Night , Elie talked about his experience at the concentration camp, which was extremely hard to read. Going to the Holocaust musuem was even harder. When we watched life is beautiful, they talked about how they take older people and children into a room and tell them that they are going to take them in for a shower. But they actually put them into a gas chamber. And at the holocoaust museum I saw a picture and there was someone who knew what was going on with the gas chambers and was throwing out her kids, screaming let me die and not them. But an overall question I had during this unit was that, did the people torturing the Jews actually believe that they think it's fair to take innocent people to a concentration camp, or were they just afraid of Hitler and had a better advantage because they were German. In the beginning of the book Night , Elie talked about how much he cared a...