(The discussion of night and the Holocaust)
“If we do not study history, we are doomed to repeat it.” - George Santayana. The significance of the quote relates to something tragic that happened almost seventy-six years ago one of the worst acts of human cruelty in history. The Holocaust. It was a terrible act by a far right radical government lead by Hitler. There are a lot of reasons to remember the Holocaust but the main reason is because we need to study it to prevent it from ever happening again. It was one of the largest genocides in history. It was tragic and traumatizing to many. It broke up families, friends, and it pinned father against son for a ration of bread. It was best brought to light by …show more content…
Now there has been a lot of proven research that shows this and the effects of high amounts of stress are generally experienced by all. But when you put a person's life or well being on the line they change completely differently. The Holocaust did this to the Jews. It was terrible what people would do just for a ration of bread. Brother would fight brother for soup, it pinned those who had already lost everything, and only had each other against one another. Again Elie Wiesel has a quote from his novel Night that will help drive this home, “All of a sudden this pleasant and intelligent young man had changed. His eyes shining with greed.” (Wiesel, 55). The background for this quote is this. He was stationed at a labor camp with a lot of polish workers and one of them was very kind to everyone. But he found out that Elie had a gold crown. As he found this out he would mercilessly beat Elie's father until Elie gave up and gave him the crown. As soon as he handed it over the caring and thoughtful man had returned. So it's evident that people change under high stress situations and is another of the many reasons it should be