Pg 23-28

"There was a woman among us, a certain Mrs. Schachter. She was in her fifties and her ten-year-old son was with her, crouched in a corner. Her husband and two older sons had been deported with the first transport, by mistake. The separation had totally shattered her." Today in religion we watched a movie about the Holocaust. I specifically remembered one woman who was about 10 around the time of the ordeal. When she got on the cattle car for her deportation from her home to the concentration camp, she saw her father. When she and the rest of the people she was traveling with got of the car her father was no where to be found. She never saw him again. I cant even imagine losing a loved one without the idea of even knowing what happened to them. No body, no nothing. It makes it seem as if they simply disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Obviously the woman from the movie survived to tell her tale and it didnt appear that she had completely lost her mind. Unfortunately, Mrs. Schachter wasnt as lucky. On the third night since the disappearance of her family, she claimed to a see a monstrapolous fire in the field just outside the train. When the rest of the captives looked to see the "fire" all they saw was the darkness of night. If you think you cant stand your parents now, think about if they were going mad. Maybe we shouldnt be as sorry for the mother as we are for her son. He is only 10 and has not yet found his place in the world (and with what is to come may never find it). It is likely that he will never see his brothers and dad again not to mention his mother has completely lost it.

I think the most startling fact of this book so far is the fact that Elie is being taken to Auschwitz. Yes it is completely remarkable that Elie survived this terrible ordeal in the first place but it is simply astounding that he survived Auschwitz. It is estimated that more than 1.25 million people wre brutally killed at the death camp. I find the initial reaction of the people onboard the train quite ironic. "There was a labor camp on site. The conditions were good. Families would not be separated. Only the young would work in the factories. The old and the sick would find work in the fields. Confidence soared. Suddenly we felt free of the previous nights' terror. We gave thanks to God." If only they knew what lied instore for them here......


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNhFxV79_Kc
Could the train tracks at the beginning be the ones that Elie found himself on?

BLOGGINNNN'

Chapter 1

Moishe the Beadle is introduced as a "jack-of-all-trades" in the Jewish faith. The people around him even though "his presence bothered no one." Even as a loner he is still well thought after by the townspeople. Elie Wiesel met Moishe in 1941 when he was looking for someone to help him study the Kabbalah. Moishe rises several good questions. Why do you cry when you pray? Why do you pray? Elie find both questions equally hard to answer. He finally responds with "I don't know. I don't know." Why do WE pray? Normally it is for sometinh that we want. Rarely do we pray for genuine reasons, such as a loved one being in need of God's help. When Elie turns this question back on Moishe, he answers it like he was truely and serioulsy thought about it before. "I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions"

From that day on, the duo spoke nearly every evening about "the Kabbalah's revelations and mysteries." And Elie became convinced that "Moishe the Beadle would would help me enter the eternity, into that time when question and answer would become ONE."........... Then comes the part of the journey that is most familiar to people around the world. All the foreign Jews of Sighet were forced into cattle cars by the Hungarian police. Among them was Moishe the Beadle. Would this spell the end of Elie's study of the Kabbalah? No! One day when Elie was to enter the synagogue he spotted Moishe sitting on a bench near the entrance. But how had he been able to escape when only moments after they had finished digging their own graves, the Gestapo had open fire on them. Moishe had been wounded and left for dead. But unfortunately Moishe too began to question God. How could he have let this happen to so many innocent people?

For two years there was little to no action. Germany was sure to be defeated! Right? They were going to lose and one of the Planet's greatest dissasters was to be averted. Wrong. The Jews were being forced from their homes and shipped out. Where they to suffer the same fate as Moishe's companions two years earlier. For three long days, the comfortable ghetto was turned into a boot camp. The synagogue became a railroad station, people being loaded into boxcars. one car per eighty people. The train was on its way and Elie's journey began.....