My Thoughts on... "Night" By Elie Wiesel

After reading Night by Elie Wiesel, I found myself at a loss for words. This story is one of many who suffered inside of concentration camps and one of few who get to tell their stories. I was amazed at how intense this story was. I have grown up in the American Education system and have heard for many years about the Holocaust many times. I feel like in school we are desensitized to think that this horrific thing can be grouped as if all the people imprisoned had a similar story. However, this book made me realize that as people we need to realize the millions of different stories ans how they differ in so many ways. This story in particular is one that cannot be compared to, as all of the others should not be as well. Each story is a terrifying testimony and should be treated as such. This specific story had me feeling empathy for this man to a point where my heart broke to think that any one person would ever have to go through this, let alone millions. I think that teaching this subject matter in a classroom would have to be done with the over all concept of empathy in mind. Empathy moves us and creates a sense of humanity within us. Without empathy we end up desensitizing something and making it just another thing that happens. This story could go along with a whole unit on either empathy that teaches students to empathize and not to group those together who went through something that was similar. I believe the greatest thing we can do as teachers is to set our students up to be great patrons of society, because after all, they the future generation of leaders. We can start by doing this with teaching empathy in its most hard hitting forms through literature. This book is a great start to a unit on empathy and fits in to other Holocaust curriculum at the same time. I found this book enjoyable for the fact tat I will be able to use it one day in my classroom to teach empathy. 

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