In the beginning of Chapter 2, Elie and his family have arrived in Auschwitz. They are abruptly thrown into the systematic and compulsory life within the camps. They are first separated from the women, and Elie states "I didn't know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever." This is where I knew, things were gonna get dark. Elie advances through the "check in" process of the camp, and he gradually begins to realize the situation he is in. Everything at this point is happening so quickly, and then out of nowhere, he sees the babies. When I read this I realized that Elie's experiences were not going to be censored in any way. I was going to be reading through the gritty realism of what this man lived through. I pretty much put my iPad aside and told myself "I can't read this anymore." I was shocked. I finally began to read again, hoping that some other depressing thing wouldn't be waiting for me at the turn of the page. Elie and his father have been in the camp for what seemed to me no more than four hours, and it was pretty safe to say they had lost their humanity. Yet another change of pace occurs as they are thrown into a line headed to the crematorium. Every moment that Elie describes while in that line chilled me to the bone. Luckily, the main character of the story is in the line so I had some assurance of what would be the outcome. They are then taken to the barracks, where they sort of just gather and make friends with people. Finally, an exhale from the chaos. The next day, they are talked through the basic rule of the camp. Either you work and obey, or you die. Then, Elie's father asks the Gypsy inmate who is in charge if he can go to the bathroom. The Gypsy inmate then proceeds to slap the father in the face so hard he "crawled back to his place on all fours." Elie, instead of retaliating, shows just how much the camp has changed his morals by just watching his father get slapped in the face. And to illustrate the point even more, he does the same exact thing later when his father is beaten in front of him once again, but that time, he just flat out backs a way to not get hurt himself. In 28 pages, I saw that the once ordinary Jewish student from Sighet become A-7713, a teenager who has been stripped from his faith and arguably, his humanity.
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