Faith in Flames

One of the greatest mistakes humankind could ever make is murder, “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another” (Stevenson). It is quite disgusting to think that humans are capable of killing their own kind with full knowledge of what they are doing. In history, there have been many instances of mass murders of people; the greatest and most famous one being the Holocaust of World War II. More than 11 million lives were lost in the organized Nazi killings. Only a handful number of people survived and an even smaller number of those people are still living today. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, pens his horrifying experiences in the memoir, Night. This book contains various gripping moments, but the one that impacted me the most was Wiesel’s first night at Birkenau, when he witnessed babies being thrown into fires. This was the moment I chose to “capture a snapshot” of.

In the drawing, there is an iris and within the iris is a reflection of a fire with a baby at the bottom of it. This is supposed to be of Elie’s eye when he was witnessing the burning of the babies. The words I chose to put on the piece were excerpts of this quote,

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that smoke.

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned t...

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...longs to our collective memory” (Wiesel xv). This responsibility of “bearing witness” should be passed from generation to generation and should never be abandoned. That is the core reason for remembering the history of the Holocaust, to make sure that this tragedy will never be repeated in the future. One should never forget the silence of the darkness that fell upon the world decades ago, when more than 11 million lives were lost because of their “race” or because of their courage. “To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” (Wiesel xv).

Works Cited

Stevenson, Angus, and Christine A. Lindberg. New Oxford American Dictionary. 2nd ed.

Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.

Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division of

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.