In
his memoir ,appeals to people to have a more inclusive sense of humanity.
First, in his introduction to Night, a book in which he testifies about the
atrocities prisoners endured in the death camps during the Holocaust, he writes,
Was there a way to describe the last journey in sealed cattle cars,
the last voyage toward the unknown? Or the discovery of a demented and glacial universe where to
be inhuman was human, where disciplined, educated men in uniform came to kill, and innocent
children and weary old men came to die? Or the countless separations on a single fiery night,
the tearing apart of entire families, entire communities? Or, incredibly, the vanishing of a
beautiful, well-behaved little Jewish girl with golden hair and a sad smile, murdered with her
mother the very night of their arrival? How was one to speak of them without trembling and a
heart broken for all eternity? Deep down, the witness knew then, as he does now, that his
testimony would not be received. After all, it deals with an event that sprang from the darkest
zone of man. Only those who experienced Auschwitz know what it was.
The vanishing...beautiful, well-behaved little Jewish girl with
golden hair and a sad smile was Wiesels sister, whom he brings to life in all her young
humanity. In fact, he brings all of his dead family to life, as he writes about their reaction
upon first being forced to leave their home. He makes the reader see them as human beings, even
though they were not being treated as such. The reader can feel their emotions. They were
people: a father; a mother; Elie; and a small sister. As he describes his family on page 19,
they are people who are being treated worse than animals.
My father was crying. It was the first time I saw him cry. I had never thought it
possible. As for my mother, she was walking, her face a mask, without a word, deep in thought. I
looked at my little sister, Tzipora, her blond hair neatly combed, her red coat over her arm: a
little girl of seven. On her back a bag too heavy for her. She was clenching her teeth; she
already knew it was useless to complain. Here and there, the police were lashing out with their
clubs: "Faster!" I had no strength left. The journey had just begun and I already felt
so weak... "Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!" the Hungarian police
were screaming. That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today.
They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.
Wiesel also notes other people who were oppressed by the Nazis,
making it clear that it was not only Jews who were treated as if they were animals: We were
herded into yet another barrack, inside the Gypsy camp. We fell into ranks of five. However, in
one encounter with a Gypsy prisoner, the other man strikes Wiesels father.
The Gypsy stared at him for a long time, from head to toe. As if he
wished to ascertain that the person addressing him was actually a creature of flesh and bone, a
human being with a body and a belly. Then, as if waking from a deep sleep, he slapped my father
with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours.
Importantly, Wiesel continues in his introduction to the
book:
Could men and women who consider it normal to assist
the weak, to heal the sick, to protect small children, and to respect the wisdom of their elders
understand what happened there? Would they be able to comprehend how, within that cursed
universe, the masters tortured the weak and massacred the children, the sick, and the old? And
yet, having lived through this experience, one could not keep silent no matter how difficult, if
not impossible, it was to speak. And so I persevered. And trusted the silence that envelops and
transcends words....
This is an important plea to people
to treat others as human beings and to be inclusive of all people. As the author notes,
"For, despite all my attempts to articulate the unspeakable, 'it' is still not right."
The "it" here is the brutality of people against other people whom they consider to be
different.
No comments:
Post a Comment