First of all, Mr. Weber had, for the most part been brainwashed in a way, though it was more trickery than anything.  The SS officer had been told of greater equality, better economy, and dozens of other artificial promises.  Adolf Hitler, Mr. Weber’s leader, had established these ideas, and then slowly he drove more and more ideas into his head.  Thus brainwashing, this is stated in The Wave, by Todd Strasser. It says, “You traded your freedom for what you said was equality. But you turned your equality into superiority over non-Wave members.” This is showing how the students had given up their own freedom, so that they could become part of the group…but then the power they had became to overwhelming, and they became “better” than anyone else.  This quote is a perfect example of how trickery had taken hold so easily on Mr. Weber.  Another such instance is when Mr. Ross the student’s teacher started “The Wave”, he did so by making the things they did feel like the norm, and eventually it became a thing of power. If you were in The Wave you instantly were the “better” person over another student like you whom wasn’t in The Wave.  In addition, an exemplary time in “The Wave” that had demonstrated this affect is when David, and Laurie, his girlfriend, had their little quarrel.  He followed her down the road, and then he started to argue with her about whether The Wave was a movement for the good of the people.  Laurie thought that it was a bad thing, because it got innocent people hurt, on the contrary David thought that The Wave brought about a good sense of order, and it didn’t cause problems but mend them.  So, in the end David shoved Laurie to the ground, and then it him that he didn’t mean to, and The Wave nearly made the decision for him.  These incidents prove that such large movements, tagged along by propaganda, can make the mind think differently than it should, not by the fault of the person being affected.

          In a second story, called Night, by Elie Wiesel, there are many occurrences where an officer does things he has no say in, like Mr. Weber. At one point, a boy named Meir saw his father with bread in his hand, after a walk across more than 100 miles in the snow.  He actually goes to him and knocked him to the ground and beat him to death, now keep in mind that this is his own father.  He killed his father because he didn’t want to die himself. This severe incident only occurred because of the extreme conditions, and that is precisely why Mr. Weber did should not be punished for the crimes that took place in Germany’s death camps…He probably, as an officer, was directly under strict watch by Hitler, therefore making it a “His life or mine?” kind of situation.  A second time that a person had no choice in an issue was in “Night”, when the men and women were forced to dig their own graves, only to be shot into by the Nazis.  The people did not want to dig their own graves, but they had to because when there are five plus SS guards armed with heavy machine guns, you just tend to listen…A third and final time a person in “Night” had to do something against their own will, do to extreme circumstances, was when the families had to witness a public hanging of someone in the camp.  A dentist, that was issued to commence in extracting gold fillings from the prisoners, had been caught hording some of them for himself.  The Nazi leaders saw to it that he be hung, and so he was hung, while masses of imprisoned Jews were called out to endure the gruesome spectacle.  The people of the camp had not chosen to watch a man die out of their own will, but by the fact that if they’d been caught, they would have been killed. In the case we are discussing today, Mr. Weber could have been forced by his own death or his family’s murder to participate in the mass killing of Jews in Germany.

          Clearly, this evidence of many forced killing, and brainwashing confirm how Alexander Weber could have been severely influenced, and not actually wanted to do the crimes he’d done. As you should now understand, Mr. Weber is an innocent man!

At the beginning of this book, the family is living in a small town somewhere in Hungary.  The dad travels to the United States to get immigration papers for his family, so they can move to America.  They want to leave Hungary, so they will not be killed by Hitler.  Unfortunately, the dad fails.  He is stuck in the United States, unable to return to Germany to get his family.  Therefore, the mother, four sisters, and brother, are all left alone to fend for themselves.

The family is gathered up by Hitler’s soldiers and sent to Auschwitz, a concentration camp.  Luckily, when they get there, the four sisters and the brother are chosen to live.  But the mother is sent to the gas chambers and dies.  The five siblings are trying to stay alive at Auschwitz.  Philip, the brother, is on a different side of the camp than the girls.  Philip tries to communicate with his sisters, but he is caught.  As punishment, the next day he is put in the gas chambers.  So now only the four sisters are left.  For now, they are still together.  They spend six months in Auschwitz, trying to stay alive.  There are terrible conditions at Auschwitz, and they have to eat sawdust and drink urine.  They have rags for clothes and have to sleep on each other because there is no room.  Their time at Auschwitz is soon coming to an end.

One day in Auschwitz, the girls are about to be put in the gas chambers, but instead Nazis decide to take them to a new concentration camp called Birnbaumel.  The good thing about Birnbaumel is that there is no crematorium there.  The girls realize this is a good thing, because without a crematorium, mass numbers of people cannot be killed.  The girls are trying to survive at the new concentration camp and are getting sick with typhus.  After a long stay at Birnbaumel, they are sent to walk to a third concentration camp.

The girls are sent to a new concentration camp near the city of Breslau.  As they were marching through the city, they decided to make a run for it.  All the sisters made it to an abandoned house, except for Cipi.  She never got the signal to run, and just kept marching on towards the concentration camp.  The other three girls find lots of food in the house, and stay there for a while.  They get most of their strength back.  One day, they see a bunch of Russian troops marching outside the house.  They girls know they are liberated and run out to meet the troops.  They travel along side the Russian troops for a few days, and the girls are so excited because the war is over.

Next, the girls want to go to the United States.  They sail to America on a U.S. Merchant Marine ship.  Once they are in the United States, the girls live with their aunt.  They wonder if Cipi lived, but they never find out.  They assume she probably died in some German concentration camp.  In America, the girls all started families and lived the rest of their lives with freedom.

I personally liked reading this book very much.  The book went into great detail on how the girls lived and how cruel the concentration camps could be.  It had lots of suspense and was very interesting.  I recommend this book to everyone (if they have a strong stomach).  The book made me realize how horrible the Holocaust was.   I think the author wrote this book to show what it was like to live through the Holocaust.  I learned a lot from reading this book, and I am glad that I live in a free country, the United States of America.

The deportation and incarceration of the Jewish people was a significant guide to the times attitudes towards other human beings. Since they were seen as inferior to other more "pure" races, it was permissible to degrade, beat and kill innocent people without consequence. When the Wiesel family was shipped off in cattle cars with their peers to the concentration camps, they knew nothing of what was to become of them. Further into the experience they learned what utter cruelty could be done to people, and how in the face of such evil there seemed that there could be no God. Their faith in humanity was challenged, and by simply reading about such experience mine was as well. It is hard to imagine that the actions displayed in the book and movies are real, it leaves a bitter taste of reality behind.

With the control the Kommondant and his staff has over so many people it was near impossible to retain any hope. However, several people provided enough instances of kindness to keep what sanity the prisoners had. Some provided simple necessities or even a few kind words from one human being to another, and it was enough to spark a degree of hope. The Kapo who wished the prisoners a good night; Jakob who took in a child; the Frenchwoman who spoke to Eliezer, they all did something that proved that there still was good in the world. Those little rays of goodness were enough to alleviate the sheer numbing comes across with the ghastliness of the time.

I was alternately sickened and inspired by the suffering of those locked away in those specially designed hells. Every experience I heard or read of simply dug a hook into me until I was so drawn into the brutality that it fascinated and disgusted me. On one side, such immorality severely challenged my perception of the potential people have to good and evil. I know that there are and have been terrible people in the world, and there always has been intolerance. To come into contact with actual accounts of such an appalling past as what we have seen opened my eyes open further and informed me of what has and can happen. The fascination involved with this unit comes from the interminable strength of the human spirit.

Witnessing the holocaust through people both fictional and real was enough to open my eyes further to the range of acts humankind is capable of. In the best of times it is hard to see the worst in people, and in the worst of times it is hard to see the best. The treatment of those in the camps, between staff and prisoners and between the prisoners themselves was enough to prove the scope of behavior people can have. Eliezer and his relationship with his father, the instinctual drive to live and the lies spread to generate hope were enough to prove the existence of what little good was there present. Seeing the narration of the dire times portrayed offered an insightful enough look that the entire spectrum of humanity was visible to scrutiny.

Elie Wiesel wrote this book to share his experience of the Holocaust so that kids like me can learn about what really happened. His journey from his home, to the ghettos, to the concentration camps teaches us what happened. He believes that the Germans are nice at first, but then the sad truth comes out as he is herded into ghetto's then to a cattle car where he was transported to concentration camps. The first one he was transported to he lost his mother and sisters. He lived through some of the hardest times in history.

The main character that appears in the entire book is Elie. I liked Elie the most because I liked his attitude, the way he looked at every thing, and his drive to never give up or desert his father. I liked this because in that situation I would want to be like that. My favorite part of the book was when Elie woke his father up from sleeping in the snow. I felt like I was there, I had a real connection with that moment. In my opinion that part of the book was very detailed. The scene just came to me and I felt like I was walking right beside him watching the events unfold. I liked the detail he used and the dialogue that the SS had. He didn't edit or change it in his book, he told us the truth and that made me like and understand the book even more.

The setting of Night is totally different from our world today, and I hope I never have to live through it. This book could prevent another semi-successful genocide. It could teach people the outcome of a genocide and see what would happen from the victims point of view. There would be many more Jews alive today, had it not been for Hitler and the Nazi's. I don't believe that that this book could be improved because it was what he truly saw.

I think Night is mainly directed towards teenagers, people who enjoy learning about history, people who like suspense novels, and people who like non-fiction books. Night is the sick truth of what happened in the Holocaust. This is by far one of my favorite books. Does his father and he make it out alive? Find out for yourself.

An enormous amount of Holocaust literature is available for those who desire to comprehend the dimensions of the Holocaust. Some are left behind by victims in the form of journals, letters and diaries, while others were written by Holocaust survivors. There are also accounts of resistance and stories of heroic rescues. The most important goal of learning about the Holocaust is to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.

Here are six classic holocaust-themed books:

1. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

   
   
   A book comprising of excerpts from diaries written by Anne Frank, beginning from her thirteenth birthday in June 1942 which was a mere three weeks before she and her family went into hiding from the Gestapo in a building's tiny room in Amsterdam until their eventual betrayal in August 1944 when they were transported to Bergen-Belsen camp, where she died of typhus in 1945. It provides a glimpse of daily life under the Nazis and her expression of faith in human goodness in the hope of living in a world without hate.

2. Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

   
   
   Originally titled "Se Questo e un Uomo" (Italian for "If This Is a Man"). This memoir recounts the author's two agonizing years at Auschwitz with his life spared mainly because of his scientific expertise being a chemist by profession, making him valuable to the Nazis. It was written to expose the atrocities perpetrated by the German Nazi regime.

3. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

   
   
   Initially published in 1946 under the title "Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager"(literally "A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp" in German). Viktor Frankl chronicled his three torturous years of experience in Nazi death camps where he lost his wife and parents; and discussed logotherapy, a new psychotherapeutic method developed to assist people find a reason for living, even in the most painful circumstances including suffering and death.

4. Night by Elie Wiesel

   
   
   Originally published in Yiddish in 1956 entitled "Un di Velt Hot Geshvign" ("And the World Remain Silent"). Elie Wiesel, after having endured through four concentration camps, vowed never to speak of his holocaust experience but decided after a decade to finally break his silence when Nobel laureate Francois Mauriac encouraged him to write a memoir about it; and had since written more than 30 works dealing with Judaism, Holocaust and the moral responsibility to battle racism and genocide. It somehow enabled people to understand the horrors of the Holocaust.

5. They Fought Back by Yuri Suhl
   
   

   A book featuring a collection of more than 30 amazing stories, detailing accounts of women including teenagers, wives and widows; and of many Jewish people of diverse political beliefs who courageously conducted anti-Nazi operations in Berlin at the height of the war. It was written to in an effort to dispel the Holocaust myth that Jews did not resist their tormentors, because the truth is, many did.

6. Their Brothers' Keepers by Philip Friedman

   
   
   A scholarly work by the "Father of Holocaust History" for the purpose of keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive after more than a decade of extensive research through interviews, eyewitness accounts and official documents. It features objective accounts of many ordinary individuals, who, at great personal risks, displayed great compassion and courage in aiding Jews during the Nazi occupation.

Other Holocaust themed series

·        Famous Holocaust Survivors

·        Heroes of the Holocaust & Their Stories of Courage 1

·        Heroes of the Holocaust & Their Stories of Courage 2

I think that the pictures the book paints really help to give the reader a feel for what Daniel goes through. Depictions of terrifying sights bring a sobering look at the holocaust. It is good to continue the knowledge of the holocaust so that it never happens again, and this book does a good job of ensuring that no one will ever forget it. Because Daniel is so hopeful the whole way through, it serves to inspire others not to lose hope.

Although I liked the book overall, I did not appreciate the time jumps in it. At times it was very confusing when all of a sudden the date changes and I have to regain my bearings. I think that because I am older I was able to successfully comprehend the story even when the time changed, but I do not think that younger readers and lower grade levels would have been able to get the same understanding out of the book.

Daniels Story is about the holocaust and depicts one fictional child's journey through death camps, resistance fighters, and survival. It takes place during world war two, specifically the holocaust era, and provides a historical aspect as well was a personal view of its time. Although Daniel is a fiction character, his person is derived from several pictures, and was made to display the events of the holocaust. I would recommend that this book be read only in history classes upon covering the second world war, because the teacher could transcribe the events to the students. Because it is sophomores who take history, they should be the ones to read and profit from it. Aside from a casual read, this book could be used to teach students about the holocaust.

In the book Elie Wiesel writes (p.24), "There are 80 of you in the car, the German officer added, if any one of you goes missing, you will all be shot like dogs." In this quote Elie Wiesel shows just how ruthless the Germans could be in their task of deporting the Jews, it also shows just how cruel the Germans were to their prisoners, they packed them into cattle cars 80 at a time and referred to them as "dogs". In referring to the Jews as dogs the Germans dehumanized the Jews by not treating them as human, but as animals.

Another passage where we see dehumanization was when on p. 37 Elie Wiesel writes on how the first concentration camp changed the prisoners, "In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men." This quote shows just how bad the Jews were treated at the first camp they arrived to. After arrival they were sorted, stripped, and forced to run from barrack to barrack, after this process had been going on a wile Wiesel writes that they had "ceased to be men". This is just one of the many ways that the Germans dehumanized the Jews in this book. This passage shows dehumanization because the Germans took away the prisoners human qualities, the Jews were forced to run like animals under the Germans control.

In another quote Elie Wiesel describes their German tent leader, (p.48) "Our tent leader was a German. An assassin's face, fleshy lips, and hands that resembled a wolf's paws." This quote is describing how the dehumanization affected both the Jews and the Germans. In the quote the leader of the tent in Buna is described with an assassin's face and hands like a wolf this could mean that he is both deadly like a wolf or an assassin, this is an example of how dehumanization affected the guards, in an earlier quote (p.28) the guards surrounded the prisoners "like wolves".

 

Levi's original title, If This Is a Man , implies that in Auschwitz, even one's membership in the human race may be called into question. Transformed into "one single grey machine", Häftlinge3 are robbed of all conventional forms of identity; all clothes and personal items are confiscated4 and even names are replaced by six-digit numbers. The Häftlinge are further dehumanised when, as cogs in this machine, they are pitted against their fellow inmates in virtually hopeless competition, becoming "enemies or rivals" , seemingly mere obstacles to each other's personal chances for survival. The prevailing attitude in the camp is, "You will be chosen [for extermination]. I will be excluded."

It is almost unimaginable that any human values could persist in such circumstances, but, Levi argues, persist they do. He refuses to see his fellow inmates as faceless competition, writing "No, I honestly do not feel my companion of today, harnessed with me under the same load, to be either enemy or rival."

Encounters with others help him to remember that they are indeed human beings and individuals, which helps him to keep a grip on his own humanity and personal identity. Recalling maternal scoldings for thoughtless money-handling, he bonds with Pikolo over a shared past

Italian national identity cements the relationship between the author and his “inseparable” friend, Alberto; through contact with Lorenzo, an Italian civilian who gives him food, Levi manages "not to forget that I myself was a man."

Inspirational as Levi's account is, it is more than that: he casts an analytical eye on a situation that would be absurd were it not so horrific. He proves that “no human experience is without meaning or unworthy of analysis”by explaining or making rational, in its terrible context, the apparently inexplicable and irrational. For example, the oxymoronic statement, “our wisdom lay in "trying not to understand"” is comprehensible when he explains that any expenditure of mental effort is fruitless and wasteful; any extra energy is channeled solely into short-term endurance.

Indeed, Levi writes “we care about nothing else”. Without forgiving or justifying the violence he witnesses, he nevertheless makes it make appalling sense: for example, “they knocked him to the ground. It was their everyday duty.” Where others might blame some monstrous, abstract Evil for Auschwitz, Levi is not content to stop at such a simplistic explanation, and finds profound peril in “the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions.” From the “indifferent air” of SS troops at a hanging, examples abound of the day-to-day banality attendant upon mass murder. of soldiers at the Auschwitz train station to the “indifferent eyes”

Levi's portrayal of the ordinary, mundane nature of evil is potent and timeless, applicable to countless historical and current scenarios and as relevant as his depiction of the ordinary, mundane nature of survival during the Holocaust. Yet this it is only one of the compelling reasons for reading Survival in Auschwitz. True, lacking careful chronological ordering and documentation, the account is not particularly useful in documenting specific atrocities or the events of any particular day. Levi gives no assurance of his information's validity beyond the simple statement, “It seems unnecessary to add that none of the facts are invented.” No, this is not a history of dates or sources, but of humanity at its best and worse, and for that Levi deserves an honorary place not only among the historians of the last century, but among its most cherished minds.

 

Though, as the 1997 winner of the Jean Martin Award1 for her PhD thesis, Ranki is an academic authority, she makes excellent use of historiography to argue the foundations of her case, quoting liberally from such authorities on the subject as Ernst Gellner (Ranki 1999:5), Ghia Nodia (Ranki 1999:5), and Michael Ignatieff (Ranki 1999:6). Ranki uses Gellner's work to connect nationalism with modernity. With Nodia's argument, Ranki establishes the connection between liberalism and modernity, and therefore nationalism. With Ignatieff's observations on ex-Yugoslavia, Ranki finally links nationalism to reactionary conservative policies. Thus, in a few broad strokes, she grounds the basis of her entire argument - the inherent connection between nationalism and conservatism - on a solid historical foundation.

Beyond its foundations, however, Ranki's case is not without controversy. She goes further than historians before her, placing the blame for Hungarian-Jewish extermination almost entirely on the Hungarian nation itself. While previous scholars, Ranki explains, assert that the Hungarian Jewish community might have survived the war “relatively unscathed,” (Ranki 1999:2) if only their government had cleverly avoided the dangerous diplomatic manoeuvres that brought on German occupation in 1944, Ranki, in contrast, argues that the social and governmental dynamics within Hungary, both undeniably shaped by exclusionary nationalism, were the determining factors in the nation's participation in the Holocaust. She writes that “decades of state-sponsored and social antisemitism,” combined with “antisemitic and extreme right wing government policies…inevitably led to the Holocaust in Hungary” (Ranki 1999:2). She insists that the blame lay so clearly within Hungary that a Holocaust was inevitable, not due to German actions but due to Hungarian society and government policies.

This thesis, however, seems to ignore certain key aspects of the historical context of the time. In her own book, Ranki stresses the importance of a powerful Nazi Germany's pressure on Hungary, writing that “anti-Jewish legislation has to be seen in the context of the perceived successes of Nazi Germany and their impact on Hungary” (Ranki 1999:138). The large territorial gains that Hungary enjoyed in 1938, 1940, and 1941 were, she writes, were swiftly “repaid by adoption of the third anti-Jewish law” (Ranki 1999:138). If these laws were enacted because of inherently external reasons, namely German actions and pressure, and not due to any inevitable Hungarian factor, then Ranki's assertion that the crucial elements behind Hungary's Holocaust were within Hungary itself seems to fall short.

Ranki dodges this potential problem in her theory by introducing the case of Denmark. She reminds us that the demands placed on Hungary to enact anti-Jewish legislation before the German occupation were comparable to those exerted on Denmark, but that Denmark successfully resisted and Hungary did not (Ranki 1999:139). This, however, fails to take into account the obvious counter-argument, however: that Denmark was truly an exception to the rule in Europe at the time. An atypically democratic nation with an extremely small Jewish population of less than eight thousand2, occupied Denmark cannot be used as a yardstick for comparison without distorting the reality of the situation across the remainder of Europe. It is thus that Ranki's blame for the Holocaust solely on social and political factors within Hungary begins to fall short.

Ranki can be seen to undermine the extreme stance of her thesis again when she discusses the Jewish community's own reaction to the situation. She writes that the Hungarian Jewish community retained its trust in the state long after it should have, “ignoring that the state was essentially different from the one with the policy of inclusion” (Ranki 1999:132). Paraphrasing Gershom Scholem's statement about German Jews, Ranki (1999:132) writes that the Hungarian Jews “distinguished themselves by an astounding lack of critical insight” into their own predicament. Had Jewish leaders better understood their predicament and taken more concrete action, the Holocaust in Hungary would not have played out as it did. In this sense, though Ranki ascribes no blame to the Jewish community, she does seem to explain the Hungarian Holocaust in light of actions of the Jews themselves. Regardless of the accuracy or inaccuracy of this controversial statement, it is clear that Ranki's argument that the Holocaust ensued solely and inevitablya result of the Hungarian government and people is placed in jeopardy.

Notwithstanding the specific problems with her argument, however, it is clear that Ranki's account of the Jewish plight in Hungary reveals important lessons about nationalism and racism in general. Though her extreme stance in blaming the Hungarian government and population entirely for the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry can be called into question, it is important nonetheless to understand the wider implications of her statements. Surely, mass deportations would not have happened as easily as they did if there had not been some prevailing antisemitic sentiment in the general population of Hungary. Furthermore, Ranki's arguments explaining why this was the case merit close attention. Her argument that nationalism can be the ideology for both inclusion and exclusion-based policies (Ranki 1999:218), coupled with her explanation of the “changing politics of nationalism and the process of exclusion to the point of genocide,” (Ranki 1999:219) is a poignant warning of how nationalistic exclusionary politics can get out of hand.

Ranki's analysis, though fittingly grim indeed, is at the same time a hopeful one. She writes of a time and place in which, as in the opposing case of occupied Denmark, “the social political ethos does not condone hatred, xenophobia, prejudice, racism, discrimination, [and as a result] can resist even the formation of law” (Ranki 1999:216). This elevation of people over law, of culture over rule, has been starkly relevant throughout modern history, from the French Revolution to the American public's involvement in the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. Though the results of these popular actions may inevitably be called into question, the sheer importance of the social-political atmosphere, as Ranki points out, is an undeniable reality that must be recognised.

Vera Ranki's The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion is a thorough account of the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry, making use of decades-old information to view the phenomenon in a new light. Though her strict blaming of the Hungarian government and people can be debated, the conclusions she draws cannot. The case of Hungary before and during the Holocaust illustrates the power of nationalism as a social force, and explains how the social climate of a country can determine its fate.

 

“It is as though both narrator and listener have seen the holocaust through the author's eyes. This translation of Wiesel's book conveys all the terror, anger and despair that the Nobel Peace Prize winner endured as a 15-year-old boy.” (Wysocki 1).

Barbara Wysocki supports my thesis by saying Wiesel has brought the reader into the story by telling his tales of horror. The reason the book is not too harsh on the reader is because this is what really happened. It is not a science fiction book about violence and killing. This is a significant event in the history of the world. The things these prisoners went through were horrifying. Wiesel is telling the story how it should be told.

Lisa Katz, writer from about.com, says “the book is not pleasurable reading” (Katz 1) because of the way Wiesel describes the death camps. The reason the book is not too harsh on the reader is because this is what really happened. I think Wiesel wrote this book with a little bit of horror yet not to the point where it is impossible to read. This is a first hand witness at the scene. Wiesel did not just make this story up to write about violence and killing with no purpose. The way he wrote it really brings the reader into the story and feels like they are witnessing these horrific events.

“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. (Is it any wonder that ever since then, sleep tends to elude me)” (Wiesel 32). This quote is the bottom line to what Wiesel thinks about his experiences at the German concentration camps. Utopia.utexas.edu believes that Wiesel's description of the babies being burned is too disturbing and not enjoyable to read. Wiesel does a very good job describing the babies being killed because it is giving the real truth behind what happened.

Stephanie S. of Teenink agrees with my thesis statement and says Night gives what you need to know. They think that the book won't give you facts, numbers, and pictures of the Holocaust; it just gives you the truth behind the death camps. The book is filled with emotion of all sorts but it is not too depressing because it is what really happened and we all need to know about it.

The point that needs to get across is that Night is not too harsh on the reader. It is good to read a book about the Holocaust like this one because it really brings the reader into the story. The reader feels the pain that Wiesel felt during the time he was in the camp because the way Wiesel writes the book.