The sophomore class has read the book called Night in their English II class with Mrs. Carrie Alexander. They have had the chance to listen to a survivor over live video chat in the library here at the high school.
The night book is a work by Elie Wiesel, published in English in 1960. The book is about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, at the height of the Holocaust toward the end of the Second World War. Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the parent-child relationship, as his father declines to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful teenage caregiver.
Keily Brown is one of the students in the sophomore class that has read this book. This book was a very emotional book for her. If you had ever read up on the subject the Holocaust it is a very sore subject. “There were parts in the book where I just wanted to cry, you could feel the general energy in the room change into this very quiet and sad place to be.”
After they finished the book, they followed up with a movie it was called “Schindler’s List.” This film follows Oskar Schindler, a Sudeten German businessman, who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as SS officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern “it was definitely a lot to take in,” It was a very brutal and emotional and hard to watch but it was so interesting to her. Martin Weiss is the Holocaust survivor they met with through video chat. “Meeting with the Holocaust survivor was probably one of the hardest things I have ever been a part of in my life, listening to his story was truly heartbreaking. Physically you could tell he was getting older, mentally you could tell it was a very emotional topic to talk about. Every so often he would have to stop talking just to catch his breath from crying so hard, and that was the hardest part for me to sit through. He was such an amazing and strong person, I loved listening to his story.” When talking to him she learned not to take life for granted because you never know what could come next. She also learned so much about him, she knew it was a horrible act of human nature but hearing it come from an actual survivor made it feel so much harder to believe humans could be capable of such a thing, it was extremely hard to listen to his story without completely losing yourself mentally.
Keily Brown loved this school assignment so much. She loved learning about the Holocaust and have been interested in it for years. She has learned so much from this experience and especially hearing his story.