"Night" Journal

Journal Entry #1 

“As for Moishe, he wept and pleaded: ‘Jews, listen to me! That’s all I ask of you. No money. No pity. Just listen to me!’ he kept shouting in synagogue, between the prayer at dusk and the evening prayer.” (page 7)

This passage stood out to me because it seems so ironic how everyone blew Moishe off saying that he had gone crazy and he was lying, but he was right. I definitely see where the other people in the town are coming from when they don’t believe him because the things that he talks about are unthinkable. I think that Elie wrote about Moishe so much at the beginning of the book to portray him as his protector and mentor, and then when he started sharing things he refused to believe, he became the crazy guy who yelled at people to spread panic. Moishe was trying to be their savior but they wouldn’t accept him as such. People refused to believe what he was saying because deep down inside, they were afraid he was telling the truth; they did not want to believe their family, friends, and neighbors were all killed. It is sad to see this example of a clear red flag that should have scared the Jewish people, but they continued to believe that they would be fine. 

Journal Entry #2 

“‘Remember,’ he went on. ‘Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium. Work or crematorium - the choice is yours.’” (page 39)

I think this passage does a really good job of summing up life in the concentration camps. People worked until they could work no more and then they were killed. Also, when reading this part of the book I could imagine the looks on the people’s faces when they were told this. I can imagine the pure horror on their faces when they found out how the Nazis got rid of all of the bodies, and when they came to realize how wrong they were to think they would be safe. This passage has a lot of short sentences as well. I think that this helps the reader better understand how factual and unemotional the SS officer was when reciting this “speech” that he had likely told so many times he had grown numb to the meaning behind his words. The SS officer said what he meant and meant what he said because it was firm and to the point. 

Journal Entry #3

“‘Comrades, you are now in the concentration camp Auschwitz. Ahead of you lies a long road paved with suffering. Don’t lose hope. You have already eluded the worst danger: the selection. Therefore, muster your strength and keep your faith. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life, a thousand times faith. By driving our despair, you will move away from death. Hell does not last forever…And now, here is a prayer, or rather a piece of advice: let there be camaraderie among you. We are all brothers and share the same fate. The same smoke hovers over all our heads. Help each other. That is the only way to survive. And now, enough said, you are tired. Listen: you are in Block 17; I am responsible for keeping order here. Anyone with a complaint may come to see me. That is all. Go to sleep. Two people to a bunk. Good night.’ Those were the first human words.” (page 41)

This passage is definitely a stark contrast to the previous passage I selected. His words were meant to be very comforting to the Jewish people. I think that when Elie called the “human words”, he made the point that up until that point they had been treated either as machines or animals. They were made to march and not stop and not get tired. They were told to sleep in extremely close, filthy quarters. This shows the reader how inhumane the actions of the Nazis were and how even a few comforting words made a world of difference in morale. 

Journal Entry #4

“Two boys came to join our group: Yossi and Tibi, two brothers from Czechoslovakia whose parents had been exterminated in Birkenau. They lived for each other, body and soul.” (page 50)

Family became everything after a while. People only lived in order to ensure that another person survived. Here, Elie foreshadows what his relationship with his father becomes. Eventually, when they are both hanging on by a thread, they keep fighting for one another. The two boys had lost everything and in the end, all they had was one another, and losing that too would have killed them. Having those around you that love you became so important in all of the concentration camps helped people keep going and survive. Saying that the boys “lived for each other” shows the reader how important people are to helping your mental health in any situation and especially for those in the camps. 

Journal Entry #5

“Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is he? This is where - hanging here from this gallows…’ That night, the soup tasted of corpses.” (page 65)

I think this passage is very representative of how much Elie had lost his faith in God. He believed that God was allowing the Nazis to kill these people and forcing them to watch it. I think he believed more that God was punishing them for something even though they did not know what. Saying that “the soup tasted of corpses” was an analogy to saying it tested wrong because why should they be the ones who get to live to see tomorrow? I think he felt guilty that the other prisoners were killed because they did not stand up for one another. No one tried to stop it. This shows the reader how impactful the deaths of those around you can be to you. 

Journal Entry #6

“His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily: ‘I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.’” (page 81)

This really stood out to me and I stopped and thought about it for a few minutes when I read it. The man Elie was talking to had clearly lost all faith in God. God did not keep his promises to protect them while Hitler had kept his promises to get rid of all of the Jewish people in Germany. I find it very ironic and depressing that this man believed Hilter, the man who sought to kill all of them, more than his own God. I think this sentence was meant to shock the reader and make them realize how terrible it is that a man who caused genocide was better at keeping his promises than God was. 

Journal Entry #7

“Suddenly the Blockaelteste remembered that we had forgotten to clean the block. He commanded four prisoners to mop the floor…One hour before leaving camp! Why? For whom? ‘For the liberating army,’ he told us. ‘Let them know that here lived men and not pigs.’ So we were men after all? The block was cleaned from top to bottom.” (page 84)

I think this passage stood out to me so much because it was the first time that they had been recognized as people. Elie’s shock is apparent too as he says “So we were men after all?” The use of this rhetorical question is a very prominent part of the passage and it is meant to make the reader realize that they had been treated as less than men the whole time. I also find it crazy that the Blockaelteste had to clean the barracks for the reason of looking better to the liberating army rather than cleaning it because it was gross and unsanitary. It makes the point that it likely never, or very rarely was cleaned while the prisoners were living there. They did not care how terrible the living conditions were for their prisoners because it did not matter to them if they got sick and/or died but keeping up “good” appearances with the other army was important. 

Journal Entry #8

“We finally succeeded in entering. Inside, too, the snow was thick. I let myself slide to the ground. Only now did I feel the full extent of my weakness. The snow seemed to me like a very soft, warm carpet. I fell asleep. I don’t know how long I slept. A few minutes or one hour. When I woke up, a frigid hand was tapping my cheeks. I tried to open my eyes: it was my father.” (page 88)

Here, Elie uses the simile “like a very soft, warm carpet” to show how anything can feel comforting when you are as tired and in as much pain as he was. At this point, many of the prisoners were on the brink of death, and sitting down in the snow was the last thing they should have done. As comforting as the idea of sitting down must have sounded, the cold from the snow only worsened their condition. I may be reading too much into the beginning of this paragraph but it is possible that Elie talking about the snow being thick and making it a struggle for them to get into the building is an allusion or metaphor to the SS soldiers surrounding them and making it impossible for anyone to escape and anyone who tried would be shot instantly. The German soldiers are the snow and being shot is representative of the snow accelerating their deaths. 

Journal Entry #9

“I saw myself in every stiffened corpse. Soon I wouldn’t even be seeing them anymore; I would be one of them. A matter of hours.” (page 89)

I found this passage really sad. Even though Elie wasn’t anywhere as close to death as many other people he could feel his health and stability slipping away quickly. Further down on the page, he convinces his father that they are okay and they should just rest. I found this surprising that he felt so different from what he had said to the reader earlier. I think at this point he had also accepted the fact that he was likely going to die. He did not seem to have any emotions when seeing all the people dying around him, and I think he had been numbed to death so much that it did not scare him anymore. 

Journal Entry #10

“I don’t know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.” (page 95)

I could only imagine how traumatizing it must be to see your friend lying dead next to you. This whole page was extremely moving as it talked about Elie hearing Juliek playing the songs he was forbidden to play. Juliek did this because he knew there was no punishment for it that could hurt him more than what he had coming already. He had accepted that he was going to die very soon and instead of being afraid of that, he did something he loved. There is something very powerful and comforting about people dying while doing what they love, as Juliek did. At least you know that in their last moments, they were happy. 

Journal Entry #11

“I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like: Free at last!...” (page 112)

Elie was afraid to know how he really felt after his father passed away. He did not try to figure out his feelings because he was afraid he would become like Rabbi Eliahu’s son. He was afraid that he would be happy or at least relieved he did not have to look out for his father anymore. Elie did not want to have the feeling of being freed from something that tied him down because he wanted to think that he always loved his father and he had done everything he could for him. He would rather have felt nothing in the days after his father died because then, at least, he knew he wasn’t happy.