Nate Brown #3

Dear Elie Wiesel,

            As I read the last the last section of your book, I often times touch upon quotes that are so powerful and moving that they caused me to once again put down the book and think about what I just read. I still can’t believe after the first two sections, that you and your father made it through the selection, and the hard labor in your block. Once I read the third section, I was in total disbelief and shock when you told about you and your father. You talked about how you and your father both saw the “negative sides” of human nature. A perfect example of this would be when you describe how the boy killed his father for just a slice of bread crust. “Meir, my little meir! Don’t you recognize me… You’re killing your father… I have bread… for you… for you” (Wiesel 101). This was such a powerful quote, it shows how every human when forced under catastrophic conditions, will kill anyone to survive, even the one that brought them into the world. I thought that this brought out the negative sides of human nature very well. It was probably unbearable for you to watch I’m sure. And not to far earlier, you saw the Rabbi looking for his son who you saw porously abandon him. For all of these things to be seen through the eyes of a 16-year-old adds to the impact on everyone of my generation because we can totally relate to it. It’s totally different to say that you would never hurt any of your family members to “get ahead and survive” and to actually do it. You tried your best and committed to staying with your father and by his side until his dying day. You couldn’t save him, but I’m almost 100 percent certain that I don’t have the mental and physical strength to do what you did. If he didn’t develop the mentally crippling disease that he got, he would have been proud. It’s clear that other kids your age collapsed in and couldn’t take the “burden” of their fathers any more.

            It seems as if this book was made to signify and remember that humans do indeed have a dark side of them that they will bring out from feeling terror, hunger, a struggle for survival, or even because they simply have a thirst to quench their inner void within their heart. A brilliant example of this would be when you described how two years later, after the Holocaust, you saw this women throwing coins to two children who fought to death over them. You bitterly described: “An elegant Parisian lady took great pleasure in this game. When I noticed two children desperately fighting in the water, one trying to strangle the other, I implored the lady: ‘Please, don’t throw any more coins!’ ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I like giving to charity” (Wiesel 100). I’m sure at this time you wanted to strangle her and had the same feeling you did when the SS officer called everyone a bunch of good for nothing lazy crew. You, as I realized today, saw the negative signs of human nature and it taught me a life lesson. ALL humans have an evil side and this book will be one that I remember for the rest of my life.

From,

Nate Brown