Elie Wiesel goes through an unforgettable year as he is imprisoned in Nazi death camps from the spring of 1944 through April of 1945. During that time, three unforgettable scenes seem to stand out in Elie's life. First, when the Jews from Sighet first arrive at Birkenau, reception center for Auschwitz, Elie and his family go through the notorious selection of Dr. Mengele. He and his father are pointed to the left, where they believe...
Elie Wiesel goes through an unforgettable year as he is imprisoned in Nazi death camps from the spring of 1944 through April of 1945. During that time, three unforgettable scenes seem to stand out in Elie's life. First, when the Jews from Sighet first arrive at Birkenau, reception center for Auschwitz, Elie and his family go through the notorious selection of Dr. Mengele. He and his father are pointed to the left, where they believe they will be safe. Instead, they are marched toward a pit engulfed in flames. He sees a truckload of children dumped into the pit. Believing they will all perish in the fire, Elie begins to question his faith in God. Miraculously, he and his father are eventually led to a barracks and survive, yet the scene lives on his mind. Elie writes,
Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky...Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.
Later in the work camp at Buna, despite witnessing hundreds of deaths and atrocities, Elie is particularly affected by the hanging of the young "pipel" (a boy who was the companion of an Oberkapo) by the SS. The boy is hanged but does not die instantly. Instead, he struggles "between life and death" for over a half hour. Again, Elie questions where God could be during these horrors. He writes,
"Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows..."
That night the soup tasted of corpses.
A poignant and redeeming moment happens for Elie on the forced march from Buna to Buchenwald. When the men reach a shelter, there is a crush of bodies and Elie amazingly survives even though he is buried under several men. At this barracks, Elie meets Juliek, a musician he had worked with at Buna. Juliek is in bad physical shape, but all he can worry about is his violin. That night, Elie hears a violin playing a fragment from a Beethoven concerto. It is Juliek playing, his last act on earth. In the morning Elie discovers him dead and his violin smashed. Elie writes,
I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget that concert, given to an audience of dead and dying men! To this day, whenever I hear Beethoven played my eyes close and out of the dark rises the sad, pale face of my Polish friend, as he said farewell to an audience of dying men.
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