The book I am reading is called Night By Elie Wiesel. Night is a biography about Elie and his personal experiences during the holocaust. When the book starts Elie is a Jewish student living in a small town in Romania called Sighet. He knows of WWII and has heard Hitler wants to exterminate the Jews but everything is relatively normal for him. Then, in 1944, German troops came into his town. At first they are nice but then the jews start being rounded up and pushed out of town into ghettos. Several days later Elie had to go to Birkenau, or the reception center for the Auschwitz concentration camp. At Birkenau he is separated from his mother and sisters forever. It is in Birkenau he discovers the horrors of concentration camps and their cruel methods for containing and killing the Jews. In January of 1945 he is sent from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, where he had to lay quite while his father was beaten to death just so he wouldn't receive a beating as well. A couple of months later Allied troops liberated the camp and gave Elie a feast. The book ends as Elie sees himself for the first time since he was in a concentration camp and he says he looks like a corpse. “I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto . From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.” I think this book matters because it tells the horrors of a terrible chapter in our history. People need to remember what happened so they can prevent it from happening again and understand how it still affects us today.
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The book I am reading is called Night By Elie Wiesel. Night is a biography about Elie and his experiences in concentration camps during the Holocaust. In the beginning Elie is just a Jewish student living in a small town in Romania called Sighet. He is aware of WWII but it hasn’t personally affected him very much. Then, in 1944, German troops came into the town of Sighet and started to round up the Jews. Elie was forced to go to a ghetto and several days later he had to go to Birkenau, or the reception center for the Auschwitz concentration camp. At Birkenau he lost his mother and sisters and discovered the true horrors of concentration camps. He describes the feeling of being in hell and the odor of burnt flesh making him question whether he was even alive. In January of 1945 he is sent from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, where he had to lay quite while his father was beaten to death just so he wouldn't receive a beating as well. Several months later he was liberated by american and british troops, but the horrors of his time in concentration camps stayed with him for much longer.
This historical event relates to the conflict between Palestine and Israel that is going on today. After many Jews such as Elie Wiesel were liberated from the concentration camps many of them had no home, family, and no money. As a result of this Great Britain made part of Palestine into Israel as a safe haven for Jews. As a result of the Jews going into Israel many Palestinians were pushed out and even today Palestinians and Israelite's have conflicts because the Palestinians feel like they have much worse of a life than they could have and Israel blames Palestine for all of the countries surrounding them attacking Israel in the 50's and many Israelite's feel they deserve the land as it is the Jewish holy land. Even now Israel and Palestine have a very bad relationship that could potentially start a war. This is how the conflicts in my book relate to current day events. I am reading the book Night By Elie Wiesel which takes place in a town called Sighet in modern-day Romania and various concentration camps across Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. Night is a true story about what happened to the author so everything that happened in the book happened in real life however the book can be misleading about when certain events happened and how they happened. For instance, in real life Romania joined the axis powers in 1940, but the book shows that the people in Romania were against the axis powers, which can make you think that Romania was against them. The book also shows that Romania wasn't really occupied by the Germans until 1944, but Germany occupied Romania in the middle of 1940. In addition to that, in real life Germany started taking jews out of Romania in 1941 and putting them into ghettos in concentration camps, but again the book had no sign of that happening until 1944. Of course all of that can be justified by the fact that maybe German occupation happened later in the city of Sighet, where Elie lived.
In the book many of the characters feel that Germans are the enemy and that they are going to come into town destroying everything the Jews of Sighet know and love, on the other side of the spectrum, many people believed the germans were just coming to guard the town and when the Germans arrive these “optimists” said, “Well, there you are, you see! What did we tell you? You wouldn’t believe us. There they are your Germans! What do you think of them? Where is their famous cruelty?”(Pg. 7) . Both of those opinions are reflective of what citizens in Romania and most countries occupied by Germany thought during the conflict. Elie was only 14 at the time so he had hardly any opinion of what was happening at all except when the german soldiers started to close down shops and the synagogue. Those are the main historical connections between Night and what happened historically in Romania during WWII. A big issue in raleigh is pollution. There are many kinds of pollution but the main in Raleigh is water pollution. Many people simply throw trash where ever they feel like it and many of the lakes and rivers there is a lot of pollution. If you have ever been on a walk on a greenway or in a park you have probably seen litter in creeks,rivers, or lakes. There are also gases and oils being released into the water by vehicles such as jet skis and boats, "On a busy day, thousands of people launch power boats and jet skis at Lake Wheeler." Lake wheeler is in a park a little south of Raleigh and one of the main water supplies for Raleigh. Many other waterways like this are very polluted by trash as well, "In 2012, the NCDOT removed and disposed of 325,938 bags of litter...".To help we can volunteer at waterways and pick up trash. In conclusion water pollution is a big community issue in Raleigh.
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