Dear Weisel,
How did you do it? How could you endure the pain and suffering you did and still are? As I read more and more, your story becomes less hopeful and even more dreary. One thing I don't understand is why you refuse your bowl of soup when you reach Auschwitz. You describe this moment as, "At about noon, we were brought some soup, one bowl of thick soup for each of us. I was terribly hungry, yet I refused to touch it. I was still the spoiled child of long ago," (Wiesel 42). I don't understand what you mean by this. You are hungry but you won't eat because you are stubborn? I don't understand this. Also in reference to soup, your critique on what the soup tastes like after witnessing two different hangings is baffling to me. You say one night that it tastes better than ever before, but the next you say it tastes like corpses. Could you mean, perhaps, that the night it tastes better it tastes that way because right before being murdered, the man professes his hate and says that he is cursing Germany, and is therefore hateful? The difference between this death and that of the younger boy in the second group of killing (with the other men) is that the young boy about to be killed does not say anything in protest or against the Germans. He simply allows them to kill him. Could your opinion on the soup be because he was a child? Or perhaps because he was silent while the others wished bad things upon Germany and said, "Long live liberty," (64). Does the fact that the young boy lived and had to suffer a little bit after the hanging have anything to do with it? Maybe I am not right with any of these assumptions and maybe I'm not seeing the deeper meaning behind this.
During Rosh Hashanah, you do not fast, under your fathers wishes and under your own rebellious desires, and afterwards you say you feel, "...a great void opening," (69). After rebelling the fasting for Rosh Hashanah, the gap you feel is obviously because of your loosing religion. Why do you continue to distrust and brush aside God when you feel such an emptiness within? Shouldn't you try to mend the hole and repair your relationship with Him?
I have so many questions to ask you because of the great troubling times you went through and although it might seem like I am question your actions, the fact that you were able to stay strong for so long is unbelievable and truly admirable.
Dear Nicole,
ReplyDeleteThe struggles I endured while in the concentration camps was so unbearable that even I who lived through it all and persevered to freedom have trouble looking back at what happened in these camps. I'm sure that you must feel the same. After all I am just a human being just like you or any of the people around in the world and i think that is very important to remember. I just want you to think for a second about when I thought the soup tasted great one night and not the next. As a human being the thought of seeing a child being hung and surviving the initial drop because he was too light. Now imagine watching hi and seeing the look on his face as he dances along the line of life and death. Now think about a middle aged man chanting and just motivating you that you are a great person and a great religion, and that Germans one day will be beaten and then we can have our revenge. This is a man who is hanged with pride and dignity believing that his death could save millions. Now think back to when you asked me why the souped tasted better on the night of the death of that dignified man rather than that of the suffering child. I think that should answer your question. I as you are am a human being.