Group Reader Response LC #1: Dialectical Journal Practice
17.2.17
Critical Stance
When the Jews were infringed on their freedom, at first, they put it off as simply it being “part of the war”; doubting that Hitler could do anything to the people, even if he seeked to cause harm. Even then, as more rights were stripped from the Jews, each decree didn’t necessarily seem to cause them to worry at all.
The first “decree” was the Germans living in the same houses as the Jews. It didn’t necessarily bother the Jews at all, as they were polite, and their first impression was not one of immense cruelty. Later, it was declared that Jews couldn’t leave their houses for three days. Following this, they couldn’t own valuables. Then Jews were labelled with a yellow star, given out by the police. Suddenly, Jews weren’t able to enter restaurants and cafés, travel, attend the synagogue, and curfew for them was 6:00 pm. Ghettos started being built. Next thing they know, Jews were being deported to labor camps.
This all occurs within a very short period of time, given how much freedom the Jews were being stripped of. Moshe the Beadle gave them his story, and didn’t care until it was too late, when the Jews lost their human rights under control of the Nazi Germans.
- “Little by little life returned to normal. The barbed wire which fenced us in did not cause us any real fear. We even thought ourselves rather well off; we were entirely self-contained.” (pg. 9)
- Eliezel, like all other Jews in his community, never would have predicted anything in the succeeding weeks/months, where they go from having some rights stripped, to being treated literally as prisoners. They saw this imprisonment as a mere restriction; a temporary one, that would only be in place until the end of the war (which they thought would be near).
- “There was joy--yes, joy. Perhaps they thought that God could have devised no torment in hell worse than that…” (pg. 14)
- The narrator is hinting towards the impending horrors that they are to experience later on in the story. It is honorable, though, that the Jews see the light regardless of their conditions. By modern standards, what they would go under would almost automatically spark a form of protest or revolt, though, the Jews believed in the best possible outcome in which is stated later on in the story; that the war was coming to an end soon.
- “Jews, listen to me! I can see a fire! There are huge flames! It is a furnace!‘ It was as though she were possessed by an evil spirit which spoke from the depths of her being.” (pg. 22)
- This quote holds an immense amount of value to the future of this story, as it helps to foreshadow the coming events. The furnace, in which would later be referred to as the “oven”, or “crematorium”, literally burned people alive. Madame Shachter was indeed correct in claiming that there was a fire, however, the Jews aboard the bus vented that disbelief by attempting to get Shachter to be quiet in a violent manner as nobody would believe her. This same thing happened with Moshe the Beadle; nobody believing his legitimate story of the Nazi Germans’ terrible actions. And, yet again, in this quote, Eliezer himself is in disbelief, and attributes it to the metaphor he makes.
- “For the first time, I felt revolt rise in me. Why should I bless His name… What had I to thank Him for?” (pg. 31)
- Here, we start to see a crumbling of Eliezer’s values, at least, religiously. Though Eliezer and his fellow Jewish companions are growing immune to the beatings and strife in the story, it comes at the cost of their ability to believe, to have hope and faith, and possibly, like Eliezer, the cost of their belief in their religion.
- “Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.” (pg. 32)
- This excerpt of a quote from the original “monologue” that the narrator writes does it’s justice in terms of just how heavy of a hit that Auschwitz does to the Jewish people, at least, those who survived the strife. This brief passage is significant due to the weight that it carries; the weight that the Jews carried on their soldiers when experiencing Auschwitz.
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