My Book Club Book

     Elie Wiesel’s experiences during the Holocaust changed him because he gained maturity. When reading the book, Night by Elie Wiesel you are able to see that during the beginning of the story he was very dependent on his parents. He relied on his parents for food, water, shelter, etc. But, once the Holocaust began Elie and his father were separated from his mom and sisters. Elie and his father were not by each other’s side in the camps the entire time but, the were at the same camps.

     On page 107 you can see that this did allow Elie to be able to make some of his own decisions like, “I gave him what was left of my soup.” This shows that Elie has grown up because, if he was a little kid he would have possibly said that he was hungry and kept it for himself. But, since he is older he gave up the rest of his soup to give to his dad because he cared about him, and that shows maturity.

     Not only does that show maturity but, it also shows that he is caring. And being caring also ties in with being mature. After this point on he also went on to become independent because he was on his own for some of the time and did make a few decisions on his own.

     The Holocaust also changed Elie because he no longer cared about his survival. At the beginning of the book he was like any typical person, wanting to live a long and happy life. But, once he arrived in the concentration camps life got much harder. Elie struggle to live in life in the camps. They were not given much food or water. They also had to work for many long hours. Elie was able to survive because the one thing that motivated him to do this was his father, but unfortunately his father died.

     Found on page 113, Elie says that, “Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me anymore.” This affected him a lot because up until his father’s death he felt a small bit of motivation, and that motivation was his father. But, when his father died he no longer cared if he survived. There was nothing that motivated him to keep on going.

     Elie ended up changing from these events because at the end of the book after his father died he no longer cared about anything, not even himself. He had been threw so much work and forced to walk for a long time. His father was his motivation and after his father died Elie didn’t care about anything anymore.

Berlin Memorial

     Today in class I learned about Nuremberg Laws. We saw how the laws took away many Jewish rights and freedoms. The Nuremberg laws were targeting Jews. For example, In 1933 many Jews were discharged from their jobs. Many of the jobs that let go Jewish employees in 1933 were jobs that involved other people. An example would be that teachers where released from their jobs. This affected many Jewish people because they didn’t have a job anymore and they needed money to be able to provide not only for themselves, but possibly for their family.

     I think that the monument was built because it was to honor and show a sign of respect to all the Jews that died and suffered during the Holocaust. The Holocaust lasted about 4 years. Millions of people died. I think that they made the monument because they want to honor them by building a monument to let the survivors them know that we respect them and feel deeply sorry for what they had gone threw.

     I noticed in the laws that some years had a lot more laws made than others. The laws were created and many of the laws targeted Jews. For example in the activity that we did we did not see every law created in every year, but, we did see that some years had more laws than others. An example of this would be in 1937 there were very few laws. Then the next year in 1938 there was a lot more laws compared to 1937. This may have affected Jews because as the years progresses they were losing more of their rights and freedoms.

     I think that the law I would have the biggest problem with would have to be that pets would be taken away. The law that took away the pets of Jewish people was created in 1942. I love my dog and I would be very sad if she was taken away. I think that the people who did get their pets taken away were probably very upset. This may have been a big challenge for them because after their pets were taken away they may have possibly felt, depressed, or lonely because they missed their pet.