Night - Elie Wiesel - Part 2

Night - Elie Wiesel

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 170

June 19, 2017 

Book 49 - Night
Elie Wiesel (1972)
 Part 2 - p. 66-120
Reading Time - 1 hour

With the Russians approaching the camp in which Elie and his father were kept... the Germans decided to evacuate the camp. In the dead of winter. Elie had a foot wound and was in the infirmary but did not want to be separated from his father. Should they stay in the camp, with his father serving as an orderly and risk execution? Or should they risk the unknown march? They chose to march. Two days later, the Russians liberated the concentration camp with all of the remaining prisoners. How much of a difference that would have made. In choosing to march, Elie's father eventually dies. Had they stayed, he might have lived.

Elie wrote this book so that all would remember what happened to 6,000,000 Jews in Europe. "If we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices".

And yet... even today, we have Syria. We have Rwanda. We have Somalia. We have Ukraine. We have Afghanistan. We have the USA. We have so many places were human rights are trampled underfoot. It might start out small... with a few restrictions on freedom... on civil liberties. But what starts small can eventually metamorphose into a monster. We must always remember. We must be vigilant. The Romanian Jews... and likely Jews throughout Europe, refused to believe that something so small could turn into something so awful. But it always starts out small and inconspicuous. We must be alert.