miércoles, 25 de febrero de 2009

Elie Wiesel

He was born in 1928 in Sighet, Transylvania. During the World War II, his family and he were sent to the German concentration camps where his parents and little sister died.
In his childhood, he spent a lot of time talking with Moshe in the synagogue.
In 1942, Elie hade his bar mitzvah and he continued studying the Bible and other Jewish books, he felt really attracted to Kabbalah. He learned a little bit about astrology, parapsychology, hypnotism and magic.
He and his two older sisters survived, they were freed from Buchenwald in 1945. He got in touch with them in 1947.
He was taken to Paris, he studied at the Sorbonne and he became a journalist, he is also a novelist and a Nobel Prize winner.
He lives in New York City, and he is a United States citizen.
A turning point in Wiesel’s life came when he interviewed the Catholic writer Fancois Mauriac. During the interview, everything Mauriac said seemed to relate to Jesus. Finally, Wiesel burst out that while Christians love to talk about the suffering of Jesus, "…ten years ago, not very far from here, I knew Jewish children every one of whom suffered a thousand times more, six million times more, than Christ on the cross. And we don’t speak about them."2 Wiesel ran from the room, but Mauriac followed him, asked Wiesel about his experiences and advised him to write them down.
In 1958, he published his first book “La Nuit”, a literary work about his experience in the concentration camps and how he lost everything, even the innocence. He was not ready to publicize his experiences, however, and promised himself to wait 10 years before writing them down in detail. He has written around thirty books, in many of his lectures he has concerned himself with the situation of the Jews and other groups who have suffered as him.
In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize as “a messenger to mankind,” and “a human being dedicated to humanity.” He explained his actions by saying the whole world knew what was happening in the concentration camps, but did nothing.

He has dedicated his life to help persons who have suffered of racism and the ones who survived the Holocaust.In 1969, Wiesel married Marion Erster Rose, a divorced woman from Austria. In 1972, they had a son who they named Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, after Wiesel’s father.


nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-bio.html

martes, 24 de febrero de 2009

Night

BAckgrOUnd

There are so many reasons for the Holocaust, but there’s not one single good answer to explain why this tragedy happened, the Holocaust was something terrifying!!! It would have never existed, so much pain, so much racism, someone who is capable to burn people alive is not human. Hitler must be burning in hell because of his acts, I hope so.
The main reasons are: racism, Germany’s humiliation following the Treaty of Versailles, hard economic times, international indifference and the great manipulative propaganda of Hitler’s Nazi Regime.

When Hitler came to have power in Germany he started giving speeches about the “inferior races” such as the Jews. He was supported by many politicians of that moment and that was the beginning of a great massacre.
They began with the media, anyone or anything who was opposing to the Nazi’s Rules were removed, like television, newspapers, radio and books. They burned a lot of books, mainly the one which were written by Jews, like Einstein.
According to Hitler, Jews were blamed of being the cause of the Germany’s problems, like economy.
Jews began to be treated well after the World War I, they had permission to work, to participate in any kind of activities, to have their own business, even they won a lot Nobel Prices, and fourteen of thirty eight prices were won by Jews.
Then, something changed, they were proclaimed as second-class citizens.
They were segregated from other people, Nazis destroyed their buildings, synagogues and they were not able to have business anymore. Jews were arrested every day, even women and children with no reason, just hate.
Jews were not the only race who was hated by the Nazis, black people, gypsies, scientists [who had the idea of changing the world in a better place], Jehovah’s witnesses and homosexual people were also burned and killed.
Many of them were put in concentration camps or prisons.
Jews tried to escape to other countries, they asked to be saved, but countries just made the escape more difficult, many of them made them harder to go out of Europe. Most of them weren’t able to get a visa.
The entire world criticized Germany because of Jew’s killing but they didn’t do anything to solve the problem.

Night

Places quoted in the book




Sighet, Transylvania

Birkenau, Poland

Night's Summary

Night’s summary (pp. 3-22)

The story begins with a boy telling us about a man, this man is called Moishe the Beadle. He was a poor man who didn’t like to be helped by the other Jews.
He liked to be alone and he was a good prayer, he knew how to pray, he prayed because he enjoyed asking God real questions.
This child had a family: mother, father and two sisters. He was the third and the only son. He wanted to study Kabbalah but his father tried to convince him of not doing that until he’s an adult. One day, he found Moishe and they started talking, they enjoyed wasting their evening talking about religion, Moishe decided to teach the boy the great and difficult Kabbalah.
One evening, all the foreign Jews were transported to another place, between all of them there was Moishe, and the days were sad for the boy, then it was all normal again. After a long time Moishe returned to Sighet, and tried to tell Jews that the situation in Europe was really bad, that his trip was a lie and that the ones who were in charge of his transportation let them die somewhere. Nobody believed him, everyone thought he had lost his mind, even the boy thought he was mad, nobody wanted to believe him, because it was the twentieth century, they thought those things were impossible to happen in a world like ours.
The days passed by and good news were present in Sighet, Germany was not entering in their territory; in less than 3 days German Army made their appearance.
Germans were kind with the Jews, everyone who was afraid, started to believe that German people was innocent, that they were not bad, Moishe was lying again. Then, they were forced to wear the yellow star, it was not lethal, that’s what they thought at the moment.
After that, ghettos were created and the boy and his family were sent to the biggest one, they were afraid again, but the days passed by and they recovered hope, the ghettos weren’t that bad, it was like a little city, they all know each other and they can be with their family. Everything was ok when something bad happened, a Jew policeman was called and after being nervous almost all the night, he came back, according to him they were going somewhere else, a journey.
They cannot take valuable objects with them, and they can just have some belongings, the family was scared but no one wanted to show any kind of weakness, even the girls were really strong, crying was not enough for the Germans.
Next day, all the Jews were forced to go out and stand in the ground with the sun, thirsty and tired some Jews were taken in the train, some others were staying at home until the next day.
Finally, the family was taken into the train, there were eighty persons by car, no one could escape from there, and if they tried to they would be shot.
The train started to walk to their cruel destiny.