LC Reader Response #3

1a. In "Night,"by Elie Wiesel, humanity is tested when people of different social statuses are suddenly thrown to having to share the same fate.
1b. To Night's Elie Wiesel, anding his childhood and losing his faith couldn't have been any harder, however his strength and determination helps him carry on.

Group Reader Response LC#2

1.     Critical Stance:  Wiesel chronicles the gradual dehumanization of the prisoners.

a.     Dehumanization – the deprivation of human qualities such as civility and individuality.

b.     First, the Jews started to notice that, “There were no longer any questions of wealth, of social distinction, and importance, only people all condemned to the same fate-still unknown.” Because all of the prisoners are know by their code names, and they all practically wear the same clothing, and are all treated as animals, As the novel progresses, the prisoners eventually go into “Survival mode” trading the few materialistic items prisoners have for vital needs

c.     Wiesel starts to lose his faith, for example when the prisoners pray, he says, “Why, but why should I bless him? Every fiber I rebelled. Had had thousands of children burned in his pits? Because he kept sic crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in his great might he had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death?” Wiesel also starts to grow into survival mode as well. He trades his golden tooth for the mercy of an officer, and receives an offer to stay with his father if he gave his shoes away (which he declined). He also starts to realize that his father was not as strong as he thought, and there’s always a risk of losing him.

2. Dialectical Journal Entries
• “There were no longer any questions of wealth, of social distinction, and importance, only people all condemned to the same fate-still unknown.”

• “Why, but why should I bless him? Every fiber I rebelled. Had had thousands of children burned in his pits? Because he kept sic crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in his great might he had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death?”
• “What are you, my God,” I thought angrily, “compared to this afflicted                              crowd, proclaiming you to their faith, their anger, their revolt? What does                             your greatness mean, lord of the universe, in the face of all this weakness,                           this weakness, this decomposition, and this decay? Why do you still                             trouble their sick minds, their cripp

Group Reader Response LC 1: Dialectical Journal Practice

 1a. Discuss how Wiesel sets up the contrast between the panic of the Jews with each new decree or action of their government and their attempts to reassure themselves and to adjust to each new infringement on their freedom.

Wiesel, first of all, sees his father as a very strong, reasonable man. At first, his father claims that, “The yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You don’t die of it…” The thing is, that not only Wiesel, but also the rest of his community knows that Wiesel’s father has a connection to the Hungarian police, so they assume that he knows what’s going to happen to them, so they take his word. As a father, of course, Wiesel’s father continues to reassure his son, as well as the community. However at some point, Wiesel witnesses his father crying, claiming that, “It was the first time I had ever seen him weep. I had never imagined he could.” At this point, the book starts to show to loss of Wiesel’s innocence. Naturally, a father figure is known as the strong, protective one, and you know that you’re growing up when you see otherwise. As the novel progresses, Wiesel is much more aware of the horrors of Auschwitz, and he starts to see his father lose hope as well. However there are still people, for example, a young Pole who tells them to have more courage, as they’ve made it into the camp without being killed. I think that this is a matter of who will come up with the optimistic point of view when all others are losing hope, because no one wants to see something, people, who were so strong lose hope.

2a. Find five direct quotations from the book that you feel is important to the story and provide each with your own commentary.

Pg. 16: “My father wept. It was the first time I had ever seen him weep. I had never imagined he could.”

-Like I said, loss of innocence; Wiesel starts to see that something is really wrong.

Pg. 19: “There were no longer any questions of wealth, of social distinction, and importance, only people al condemned to the same fate-still unknown.”

-Everyone kind of forgets where they are in society, only that their lives are in the hands of the German officers.

Pg. 21: “To save was our rule; to save up for tomorrow. Tomorrow might be worse.”

-They know how vulnerable they are at this point, so they turn to this concept to at least assure something is theirs, that is, if they survive the day.

Pg. 24: “We would be getting out here. There was a labor camp. Conditions were good. Families would not split up. Only the young people would go to work in the factories. The old men and invalids would be kept occupied in the fields. The barometer of confidence soared.”

-Just the fact that they thought this was kind of disturbing. Imagine looking forward to living in stable conditions, but instead to be greeted with filth and death, that’s probably one of the worst ways to lose hope.

Pg. 32: "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.”
-Initial loss of innocence, faith, in the sense that Wiesel knew better than to believe in any more comforting statements his father or anyone else tries to feed him.

Allusion Poem Final

Being the eldest
The natural leader of the group
it was no wonder
why I expected so much

Chin up, shoulders back
With brown hair framing my pale face
and a calculating look,
I looked at my siblings

I adored everything about them
I adored their smiles, their words,
and the way they looked up to me
And because I did,
I needed to build a mindset,
a world, that wasn't perfect.

We were too smart for happy endings
too smart to think that the world was nothing
but riding off into the sunset with a happily ever after, no.
There will be burdens, troubles, tragedies,
that weren't afraid to hit us square in the face.

But in the end,
no matter where we've been,
or who we've met,
it was the three of us against the world,

and together, we had a sanctuary,
"a small, safe place in a troubling world,
like an oasis in a vast desert,
or an island in a stormy sea."
Together, we were home.

The allusions in this poem include Violet's building/inventing skills, and how I "build" a mindset for my siblings and Violet's physical appearance. The movie/book also stresses the lack of happy endings in the case of the Baudelaire children, so I included the whole, "anti-happy-ending" feel to my poem. Also, in the movie, the Baudelaire children create a sanctuary our of their parents' silhouette photo, so I included the photo in the graphic, as well as talked about it in the poem, including a quote from the movie as well. Lastly, at the end of the movie, the Baudelaires receive a letter that never came from their parents, in which the parent's state that, "..know that as long as you have each other, you have your family. And you are home," so, I emphasized that during the last stanza of my poem.

Allusion Poem Final Graphic

Explanation: Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire each have their own talent/skill. Violet invented things, Klaus had a furious reading habit, and Sunny would simply bite items she found interesting. I displayed Violet and Klaus' talents, however I added that little silhouette photo of their parents, representing our parents, and in the movie, they used this photo to create a sanctuary, and that adds to the whole "sanctuary-relationship" feel we have with each other. Meaning that even though our parents won't be around forever, we will still have each other to build that sanctuary of family.

"Night" Intro Essay: Auschwitz

Hannah Maestro and Kaori Murakawa Auschwitz Created in 1942, Auschwitz grew to become the site of one of the worst mass murders in history. Although there were no specific statistics, deaths range from 1.5 million to a staggering 4 million. At first, Poles were held there as prisoners, but later it became a prison for Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, and prisoners of other countries. The camps soon held over 100,000 people. To keep up with the overflow of prisoners, over 2,000 were easily killed through gas chambers and crematoria. Many also died through horrific experiments the Nazis performed. Experiments ranged from submerging prisoners into freezing cold water to removing their organs without anesthesia. Doctor Josef Mengele of Auschwitz, the “Angel of Death,” became an enigma of the twentieth century. Probably the most well known Auschwitz doctor, he performed a number of gruesome experiments. He would experiment especially on twins, who he thought held the secrets of heredity. Known as "Uncle Mengele" by the children, he would perform numerous operations. Injecting chemicals into their eyes to change the color, sewing them together, and performing sex change operations was a normal thing to the prisoners. Many died during the operations, and most of those who did survive died from infection.

Auschwitz was divided into three main camps. Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III, also known as Monowitz. Auschwitz I was built to incarcerate enemies of the Nazi regime, and to get rid of the minorities within. This major camp was mainly used as a place to perform all the medical experiments. This is where they conducted pseudoscientific experiments on the twins, and many more. Birkenau was built later on, in October 1941. It was the major killing center out of the three camps. It played a big role in the Nazis plans to exterminate the Jews in Germany. The following year in 1942, Monowitz was built. This camp was established to house the prisoners assigned to work in synthetic rubber factories. Out of the three, Monowitz had the least amount of deaths until March 1944, when all the other camps were abandoned. Monowitz soon surpassed the previous records of mass killings. This made Monowitz the most notorious killing camp of all time. Auschwitz was the most notorious concentration camp during the Holocaust, with one of the highest death records to date. Out of all the concentration camps, Auschwitz was the worst.




Sources:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189
http://www.jewishgen.org/forgottencamps/camps/auschwitzeng.html
http://en.auschwitz.org/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10&Itemid=9&limit=1&limitstart=3