Reader Response 1: A Letter to Wiesel

Dear Elie Wiesel,

     Surviving in the Auschwitz concentration camp must have been a horrific nightmare for you. While
 reading the first forty-seven pages I could feel the fear and uncertainty. I can not imagine what it would

be like to undergo such a painfully agonizing experience.  For example, you saw "children thrown into
flames"(32), and I was speechless, after I read the passage. How can one human commit such an

inhumane action to another? Adding this detail into the memoir exhibits how brainwashed the SS were
during the Holocaust. The detail attributes to Night because it also engraves a picture into the reader's
mind, making the reader think about the terrors of Auschwitz.

     While I was reading about the train ride too the concentration camp, I thought about the middle
passage and how the Jewish population compared to the Africans being shipped across the Atlantic
Ocean. In the middle passage the Africans were in a cramped space on a boat. In the Holocaust, Jewish

people were confined on a train. While on the train "lying down was not an option, nor could [the Jews]
all sit down. [The Jews] decided to take turns sitting. There was little air"(23). The Jews and the Africans

were treated in similar ways during the Holocaust and slavery. The two races were not treated as human
beings because the Jews were shot, if they did not follow orders and the Africans were whipped during if
they misbehaved.

     The views of the Nazis as portrayed in this book clash with my views of the world and what i consider
right and wrong. First of all, while you were in Auschwitz, you were stripped of your identity. The SS
had "barbers [shave] every hair on [your] bodies"(35), they replace your clothes, and took away your

name. This clashed with my views because the you were treated unjustly, and mercilessly. I consider this
very wrong. I believe in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. All of which are taken away in the

camps. Furthermore, I believe that everybody in the world should be treated equally. The Holocaust
opposes this belief because the Jewish population because the Germans believed that their
Aryan race trumps every other human being that existed on the earth. Yet, I hold to the belief that the best

people work the hardest and they do not give up. Many Jewish people such as yourself did not give up
and eventually survived the Holocaust. Although you think Chance allowed you to live, I believe that it
was your qualities that let you live on to tell the tale of Auschwitz.


                                                                                                                Sincerely Alex