What Did He Go Through During The Holocaust

The author dreaded going on the trip to Auschwitz, even in the moment when she made plane reservations. She didn’t only dread it for herself, but she also dreaded it for her daughter Daisy. Her daughter was 14, and she knew going on the tour would traumatize her. She questioned why it would traumatize her daughter and how it would give her nightmares. Her daughter should better understand her heritage and to be proud and identify strongly as a Jew, but because of the traumatic and horrifying events that happened, she was scared that her daughter might turn away her identity as a Jew forever. In writing novel Night, it was hard for Elie to “re-experience,” what he had to go through during the Holocaust and those memories will always stick because of how awful it was. Elie thinks it is important to tell his story so we know what truly happened during that time of pain and sorrow. Documenting what happened to him during the Holocaust allowed Eliezer to remember the awful details, so it would not be forgotten and history wouldn’t repeat itself.

In the interview with Krista Tippet, Elie says, “I never divorced God, but my strong belief in God was the reason why I was angry with God.” He made the decision to write the book and to inform us of what he went through and how he does not want the past to become the future. In comparison, the author confirmed her decision to take her daughter because she wanted to tell Daisy about the existence of pure evil and wants to protect her from that pain and harm. Daisy’s Jew life did not have much context, compared to the authors. For example, Daisy did not go to Hebrew school and they don’t belong to a synagogue. By taking her to Aushwitz she wanted to Daisy to learn more about where she comes from and her heritage, but without the fear of being a Jew. She had doubts because she didn’t want to tell Daisy about the millions of mass murders, and if she did Daisy’s innocence would be willfully taken away.

I agree with the author’s decision of taking her daughter to Auschwitz. I believe she was responsible for her daughter getting to know her family background and the traumatic events along with it. The loss of one’s innocence is associated with the evils in the world, and by taking Daisy to Aushwitz, she can better understand what happened and to teach her about the existence of pure evil. Even though the loss of her innocence might impair her emotionally or physically, it will better her in a way that she is strong enough to deal with situations like that. In the novel Night, Elie had a loss of innocence at the age of fifteen, when he had to be dragged away from his home and his family, and had to experience the most horrifying events. When Elie said, “My eyes opened and I saw that I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy’, he had the feeling of being desperately alone and his innocence was at a complete loss. Reality will take its grips as Daisy beings to grow and mature, and lose her pure qualities she once had.

The Holocaust was innocence lost in the world, and when Daisy betters understand the horrifying events she will “break,” and hold in the experiences and honor them with her mother. What in me needs to break to honor and hold Elie’s experience is my own loss of innocence when it comes to the terrifying events that Elie had gone through and lived. I need to be able to have the same viewpoint and understand the pain and hurt he really went through. I need to understand the faith that Elie had in God and the feeling he had toward God. In the interview with Tippet, he says, “I he never doubted God’s existence. I have problems with God’s apparent absence, you know, the old questions of theology. And they are topical even today.

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