Night 2

          At the midpoint of Night, I can say that this book has been excellent so far. Wiesel’s family was taken to the ghettos where they stayed a while. Soon they were taken to a concentration camp where the family was split apart, the boys to the right and girls to the left. Elie went with his father. There they worked long hours and eat little. It is around this point whew everyone starts to loose faith. Wiesel even prays, “But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!” (Wiesel 157). Wiesel, being a hardcore practicing Jew, makes it hard to believe that he would say what he did. It just goes to show that these camps pushed the people to the limit and it made them feel as though God had left them.

            I thought an interesting part of the book was the connections that I was able to make to our Social Studies lessons. At a point the author says, “We also spoke often about Palestine. Their parents, like mine, had not had the courage to sell everything and emigrate while there was still time. We decided that if we were allowed to live until the Liberation, we would not stay another day in Europe. (Wiesel 126)” This goes along with the lesson we learned in class about how many of the Jews in Europe fled at the beginning of World War II to Palestine.

            So far the book has been a fast read, and every page makes me want to read more and more.