Night by Elie Wiesel Dialectical Journals

Page Number	Quote	Analysis
7	“I wanted to return to Sighet to describe to you my death so that you might ready yourselves while there is still time.  Life?  I no longer care to live. I am alone.  But I wanted to come back to warn you.  Only no one is listening to me…”	This is when the harshness of what was taking place during the Holocaust first hit me in this book.  This man has experienced and seen so much terror take place that he has lost his will to live.  It makes me wonder how the Nazis could have lived with themselves after inflicting this kind of trauma into people’s lives (and taking lives, as well).  This man feels his only purpose now is to save others from his terrible fate.  It shocks me that someone could have been put through that much pain and suffering to the point of not caring about whether they live or not.
24	“’There are eighty of you in the car,’ the German officer added.  ‘If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs.’”	This is just disgusting to me.  Humans are being treated like a herd of animals.  I do not understand how you can have such disregard for life.  The German officer would not even think twice about killing the entire lot of them.  He would not care that he just ended eighty lives, some of which would have been children’s.  I am appalled that he would have the nerve to cruelly murder so many people because one person would have tried to escape from the hell they were in.  I wonder how the officer would have felt if suddenly, the gun had been turned on him.
32	“Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch.  Something was being burned there.  A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children.  Babies!  Yes, I did see this with my own eyes… children thrown into the flames.”	When I read this, I had to stop, go back, and reread it.  I was in total disbelief.  You would expect to hear of atrocities such as this in fictional tales of horror, not in actual history.  And yet, it is true.  Little infants were thrown into fire!  How could anyone do that and not want to kill themselves because of their guilt?  How could the people doing this have no emotion toward these babies at all!  These children all had a place in the world, a life to live, dreams to fulfill, and so much more.  Now, those budding lives and dreams have been turned into ash to be swept away by the wind.  They could not even form words to cry out because they were so young.  These babies were completely innocent and pure.  They have never done anything to harm anyone.  And they are being murdered.
65	“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 He is?  This is where- hanging here from these gallows…’”	This shows all of the pure evil and hatred that the Nazis and Hitler poured out to the world.  They were strangling God.  Anything remotely good and wholesome was squashed immediately.  God could no longer do anything to save Hitler and the monsters that followed him.  They had bound him.  For those monsters to have hung a child shows that their hearts are forever gone past the point of return.  The poor child that they hung represents God.  God’s love was suffocating throughout the world.  So many cruel men (if you can consider them men, being the soulless, heartless beings that they were) were trying to destroy God.
100	“Our ship’s passengers amused themselves by throwing coins to the ‘natives,’ who dove to retrieve them.  An elegant Parisian lady took great pleasure in this game.”	This made me shake my head in shame, for this is a perfect example of getting pleasure out of another person’s pain.  This woman feels that she is inferior to these poor children, so she decides that she might as well mock their suffering while having some “fun” with it.  This woman only cares about herself, and (whether the children see it or not), is rubbing it in the natives’ faces that she has a pleasant life while they are struggling.  The fact that she would use the children’s poverty and misery to amuse herself revolts me.  How could this woman be so uncaring about these people?  And then how could she dare to take it a step further by scoffing at their destitution.