Question

Explain: Sometimes I am asked if I know “the response to Auschwitz”; I answer that not only do I not know it, but that I don’t even know if a tragedy of this magnitude has a response. What I do know is that there is “response” in responsibility. When we speak of this era of evil and darkness, so close and yet so distant, “responsibility” is the key word. The witness has forced himself to testify. For the youth of today, for the children who will be born tomorrow. He does not want his past to become their future.

In these final thoughts from the preface precluding his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel talks about memories and trying to understand Auschwitz. What are your thoughts about the above excerpt in context with a theme you observed at work in the novel? Write a response of no less than three paragraphs explaining how the above excerpt introduces and supports a theme you identified in the novel. Make sure to use textual evidence from the novel to support your answer

Answer 1

The text shown above reinforces the context of the importance of keeping memories of the past alive, so that they do not repeat themselves in the future. This theme is very evident throughout the novel, because it presents us with a harsh and cruel reality that happened in the past, reinforcing our responsibility in not allowing it to happen again in the future.

The novel written by Wiesel shows us the cruelty of the holocaust. Although we know this story and know how destructive and inhuman it was, reading the accounts of someone who witnessed these facts, like Wiesel, is impressive and makes us afraid and disgusted. We do not want this to happen again, we do not want these conditions in our future and that is why we must keep these atrocities alive and debated, so that our and future generations do not make the same mistakes.

However, we know that we have failed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Wiesel says that we do not want another holocaust in our history and in our life and we agree with that when reading the novel, but we forget that when we do not fight against racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and any other type of prejudice in our homes and in our friendships. . We also fail when we don't vote without responsibility and elect and support prejudiced, intolerant and authoritarian leaders. This shows that although we are afraid, we have learned nothing from the history of humanity and are doomed to experience the same situations.