As I read the novel, I continued to be struck by the cruelty and devastation inflicted upon the innocent victims, who were targeted merely because of their race. It helps me to recognize how grateful I am that I live in a diverse place, where such individuality is appreciated.
Also, I recently read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. That book focused on the life of an inmate in a soviet work camp. I was struck by both the similarity and the drastic differences found in these camps. In Night, Eliezer travels throughout a system of camps, all of which, despite their common ideas, differ greatly in the severity of punishments and amount of freedom. This is similar to the disparity between the camps run by the Soviet Union. Some of the Nazi's camps are "death camps", where the primary goal is to eliminate the Jewish race, while others are "work camps". The Soviet's camps, on the other hand, were meant to punish political prisoners, but not necessarily to kill them. On top of the intense work involved, prisoners in the Russian camps also had to deal with the intense weather often present in Siberia. It was fascinating to me that there was so much similarity between the camps, yet also such disparity.
Have you ever heard of Citizen 13660? It is a graphic novel published in 1944 by Mine Okubo, an American of Japanese descent who lived in several relocation camps.
ReplyDeleteIt might make an interesting third to your set of camp readings.