Night: Part Three

“Don’t forget that you’re in a concentration camp. Here, every man has to fight for himself and not think of anyone else. Even of his father. Here, there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends. Everyone lives and dies for himself alone.”

This statement bears witness to the inhumanity and wickedness of the concentration camps and death camps. You must forget everyone else around you and only care for yourself. You must become an animal to survive. Elie felt almost nothing after the first few months in the camps. His mind was altered. His body transformed. A constant sense of death creeps and crawls around you. It becomes so unbearable you don’t even recognize yourself. This is what happened to Elie Wiesel.

I view this as a key quote from the testament of Elie Wiesel. I believe it shows how they were alone in more ways than one. Alone in death. Alone in spirit. Many men die without any notice at all. The corpses are just forgotten and thrown out to make room for the living. They were also alone in this fight against evil. Where was the liberation? Where was the support? More importantly, where was the world? The world certainly knew about these horrors. And yet nothing was done. It is incomprehensible that no action took place to help these innocents. It was only until years into the mass murder that countries helped stop the monstrosities and free the tortured. Wiesel’s tale is such terror that one begins to wonder how these actions could ever have surfaced. His story will never be forgotten. Hopefully, neither will the holocaust.