Abbott K: Third Response

          The final section of Night is definitely the hardest to read.  The most tragic scenes happen in the final chapters, and at times it is difficult to turn the page and keep reading.  The way the Jewish people are treated is absolutely repulsive.  They aren't even treated as human beings anymore.  The Germans treat the Jewish people more like animals.  They herd them up like cattle, and let them beat each other up for food like predators.  The Jewish people are even put in cattle cars when the group must travel by train.  Elie describes, "An indefinitely long train, composed of roofless cattle cars.  The SS shoved us inside, a hundred per car: we were so skinny!" (97)  Traveling on the train takes a while and many people die while they are on it.  The train stops every once and a while and the dead are simply thrown off.  They aren't buried and no prayers are said for them.  The bodies are chucked like they are nothing more than a piece of wood.  This news is completely devastating to me.  How could you simply treat a body like it is almost nothing?
           It is also greatly disturbing at how the Jewish people fight one another when bread is thrown into the car by citizens.  Some kill others in the desperate struggle to get the bread, and the person who gets the bread is not safe once it is in their hands.  The people all swarm in like a pack of piranhas trying to get the ration, and the citizens watch with interest as if they are watching an animal show.  It couldn't be any more horrible to read. One father gets a ration or two of bread and eats one piece, and his son comes over and kills him to get the other piece as if he has gone insane and doesn't realize that he is attacking his own father.  It must have been terribly gruesome to be on that train for any of the prisoners.  When Elie's father dies, it is really depressing.  He just gave up on his life knowing that he was dying.  Elie kept caring for him until his death, and he didn't even get to see the body removed.  He just came back one day, and his father was gone.  Elie states, "I woke up at dawn on January 29.  On my father's cot there lay another sick person.  They must have taken him away before daybreak and taken him to the crematorium." (112)  How dreadful is that?  Elie can't even see his father's body one last time to say prayers.  Once Elie is free again though, my spirit rises again because I'm glad his suffering is over.  Knowing that Elie makes it out alive gives me a great feeling.  The novel is extremely well written and I recommend that any person must read this novel for it truly gives the reader an insight to the life of a Jewish person during the Holocaust.