--Kommandos were a German word meaing unit or command.
example: the group of prisoners Elie worked with
--Many Holocaust survivors comment on the concept of luck. Here's a quote from another Holocaust survivor:
“I survived because I was young, and healthy, and strong, and could run fast. Because they used to come in the woods with the machine guns and you
started running. If you were lucky, the bullet didn’t hit you [...] I can’t say that I was singled out [for survival]. I don’t feel that. I was lucky. And most of the survivors, [if] you ask them how did they survive, unless they are really the frummest [most religious], they will tell you they were lucky.” --Dorothy, child survivor
--Elie comments on this idea when he is able to work alongside his father. This was extremely lucky. Not many survivors were able to stay with their family members the entire time they were at the camps.
--Elie has only been in the camp in a couple of days, but he's already gotten used to being called my a number. His new name is A-7713. He responds quickly to that number as if that's what he's been called his entire life.
--Elie's entire life revolves around a little bowl of soup and a crusty piece of bread. Imagine if that's what your entire life revolved around? Then we discussed the issue of surviving vs. living. Is Elie really living right now? I don't think he is. He refers to hismelf as a body, not even. A hungry stomach.
--On pg. 54 Elie watched his father get beaten up by Kapo. But Elie doesn't get mad at the Kapo for beating up his father, he gets mad at his father for making the Kapo beat him up. This is what he says:
"I had watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent. In fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows. What’s more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn’t he have avoided Idek’s wrath? That was what life in a concentration camp had made of me…"
This is an extreme, but this happens all the time in our society. When women are raped, sometimes people say things like, "Well, she shouldn't have been dressed that way..." or "Well, she shouldn't have been out at that bar. She knew better..." Why are we so quick to cast the blame on the victim rather than the criminal?
--During a bomb raid (pg. 59-60) where all the prisoners took shelter, one prisoner crawled out to the cauldron of soup:
"Lying on the ground near the cauldron, he was trying to lift himself to the cauldron’s rim. Either out of weakness or our of fear, he remained there, undoubtedly to muster his strength. At last he succeeded in pulling himself up to the rim. For a second, he seemed to be looking at himself in the soup, looking for his ghostly reflection there. Then, for no apparent reason, he let out a terrible scream, a death rattle such as I had never heard before and, with open mouth, thrust his head toward the still steaming liquid. We jumped at the sound of the shot."
Why do you think the prisoner screamed? He may have been screaming beacuse of his reflection. Think about it: how often do you see yourself in a mirror every day? If I asked you to draw yourself, you could probably do so. Imagine not even being able to recognize yourself because you're so different--you're face is so skinny, your eyes are sucked in, you ahve scratches and bruises everywhere...
Or perhaps the anxiety, the fear, was too much for him to take. He couldn't believe he was about to get away with it because he has lived in fear for so long.
--When the camps were being bombed, prisoners no longer feared death. They were happy when the camps were being bombed because it gave them a sense of hope. It made them feel like freedom was near and that someone was doing something on the outside to stop the Germans.
--The last scene of the chapter was very emotional. A child was hung in the gallows because he was sabotaging his factory work. As he hung there between life and death for more than half an hour, Elie wrote:
“For God’s sake, where is God?”
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“Where He is? This is where—hanging from this gallows…”
That night, the soup tasted of corpses.
Elie no longer has faith in God, his devotion to God is dead, hanging on the gallows with the child. There is no God. If there were, he wouldn't allow this to happen.
Remember, for homework, you have one final night to get your rough draft done before we peer review tomorrow. If you have any questions, please email me or Mr. Hannah.
DEETS:
In-class:
--Rough Draft Check
--Chapter 4 Paragraph Quiz
--Chapter 4 Review
HW:
--Rough Draft
--Read pgs. 66-84 in Night by Wednesday
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