Weisel's
memoir of the horrors of Nazi occupation and confinement in concentration camps is full of .
They are powerful, haunting, shocking images of what it was like for Weisel and other Jewish
people at the time.
One of the most striking images is that of fire. In the
train car, Madame Schachter becomes delirious and raves about a huge fire that will consume them
all. It won't be long until Weisel learns that her delusion was actually prophetic, that fire
awaits those who are not chosen to work.
Another image that haunts Weisel is
that of the young boy who is hanged for refusing to give information about weapons that had been
discovered hidden by one of the camp inmates. The boy and the man who had hidden the weapons
were hanged, but the boy was so small that it took him a long time to die. Weisel had described
the boy as having the face of an angel. After the hanging, there was nothing angelic about
him.
A third image is that of the violin. One of the inmates has managed to
keep his treasured violin with him, and on the night that they are made to run barefoot through
the snow to another camp, many men die of starvation and exposure. Weisel hears music and
wonders who could possibly play while corpses are piled all around them. It is the man who had
saved his precious violin, and in the morning he too is dead.
Death, hunger,
piles of clothing, ashes--all are images in this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment