Mimi-Blog Post #2

There is so much Hope, Faith, Love, and Family importance in this book but I think we should add one more identity, Sanity. I believe that many people had a traumatic experience dead or alive from the experience of the Holocaust. Mrs. Schächter was one of the first people you witness start to lose her mind in this quote you can tell see her going hysterical.

“Mrs. Schächter had lost her mind. On the first day of the journey, she had already begun to moan. She kept asking why she had been separated from her family. Later, her sobs and screams became hysterical. On the third night, as we were sleeping, some of us sitting, huddled against each other, some of us standing, a piercing cry broke the silence: "Fire! I see a fire! I see a fire!" There was a moment of panic. Who had screamed? It was Mrs. Schächter. Standing in the middle of the car, in the faint light filtering through the windows, she looked like a withered tree in a field of wheat. She was howling, pointing through the window: "Look! Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on me!" Some pressed against the bars to see. There was nothing. Only the darkness of night”(Wiesel 23-24).  

“For a second, he seemed to be looking at himself in the soup, looking for his ghostly reflection there. Then, for no apparent reason, he let out a terrible scream, a death rattle such as I had never heard before and, with open mouth, thrust his head toward the still steaming liquid. We jumped at the sound of the shot. Falling to the ground, his face stained by the soup, the man writhed a few seconds at the base of the cauldron, and then he was still”(59-60).

Everyone thought that Mrs. Schächter had gone crazy in this quote. She was screaming about things no one else saw. The experience left her isolated and punished. The second quote shows how hungry that poor man was that he would do anything to get some food, even if he died. I think that is another person that lost there mind through this terrible experience. I think some people don’t understand the severity of having an unstable mind and don’t take it seriously but when you live through something like the Holocaust you see, smell, and hear things you can never forget, and your state of mind could be lost through that.