![]() ![]() After three weeks, Elie and his father are forced to march to Buna, a factory in the Auschwitz complex, where they sort electrical parts in an electronics warehouse. Sadistic guards and trustees exact capricious punishments. After viewing infants being tossed in a burning pit, Elie rebels against God, who remains silent.Įvery day, Elie and Chiomo struggle to keep their health so they can remain in the work force. Elie's mother and three sisters disappear into Birkenau, the death camp. Elie and his father Chlomo lie about their ages and depart with other hardy men to Auschwitz, a concentration camp. ![]() Guards wielding billy clubs force Elie's group through a selection of those fit to work and those who face a grim and improbable future. One of the deportees, Madame Schächter, becomes hysterical with visions of flames and furnaces.Īt midnight on the third day of their deportation, the group looks in horror at flames rising above huge ovens and gags at the stench of burning flesh. In a cattle car, eighty villagers can scarcely move and have to survive on minimal food and water. Elie's family is part of the final convoy. ![]() In spring, authorities begin shipping trainloads of Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. However, even when anti-Semitic measures force the Sighet Jews into supervised ghettos, Elie's family remains calm and compliant. His instructor, Moshe the Beadle, returns from a near-death experience and warns that Nazi aggressors will soon threaten the serenity of their lives. It is just maybe not the first book I would have them read on the Holocaust.In 1944, in the village of Sighet, Romania, twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel spends much time and emotion on the Talmud and on Jewish mysticism. It is something all children need to understand eventually. It's a valuable account of history and is a gut-wrenching look at what evil humans are capable of. It is definitely not something I would hand him and expect him to process on his own. For example, one boy kills his own father as he fights him for a piece of bread. It may be hard for a child to read this and understand the response to trauma. While mild language for the scenes, my child is going to have a LOT of questions while reading this book. Idek jumped, turned and saw me, while the girl tried to cover up her breasts." He moved one hundred prisoners so he could copulate with this girl!. Now I understood why Idek refused to leave us in the camp. ".of Idek and a young Polish girl, half naked, on a straw mat. There also is a part where the main character comes upon a guard having sex with a woman, and because he witnessed this, he was lashed with a whip. (In fact, this affection was not entirely altruistic there existed here a veritable traffic of children among homosexuals, I learned later.)" Immediately after our arrival, he had bread brought for them, some soup and margarine. Here is one example: "Like the head of the camp, he liked children. There are several mentions of guards preying on younger boys. I normally trust the parent reviews on this site, so I wanted to be sure to note they are incorrect on there being nothing sexual in this book. It already is an upsetting topic, but it does not soften the blows, so be prepared if you have a sensitive child/teen. ![]() This one was assigned for my son's junior high homeschool curriculum, and I am struggling with the choice based on the themes, references and difficult to process evil that is described. ![]()
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