Chattahoochee River
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Ch 2 - Screams
I found it disturbing how they started to beat Madame Schächter until she would stop screaming because it showed how much the Nazis robbed the Jews of their humanity and their sense of morality. It was unsettling enough that she began screaming about seeing fires because in history we've learned how many Jews were often burned alive in furnaces or poisoned to death in gas chambers. So for me it ultimately called into question how she could've possibly had this premonition. They automatically thought her to be insane but I think that when in the face of such cruelty, sanity and insanity become indistinguishable because our fear often takes control of us and it's as if our brain shuts down in order to cope.
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Yvonne, you are pretty much right. I also found it very interesting how Madame Schachter had seen fires. I kept pondering about how she knew and I even thought that maybe she was already informed of the situation. It's actually quite spooky how she was pretty much right about what was going to happen to them, because it is emphasized that these fellow Jews knew nothing of what was done to other Jews and other people during the war. I too found it disturbing how her fellow Jews were hitting her until she would remain silent. I guess I just thought that since they were all in the same boat they would all be friendly and not violent to each other but apparently that wasn't the situation.
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DeleteI also thought that the Jews would look out for each other so it made me realize how bad their situation was if they disregarded the welfare of people who were in the same situation as them. I suppose it was survival of the fittest at that point.
DeleteIt was absolutely disturbing how the people began to beat one their own, but it is just one of the many ways their unity slowly began to break down. I myself find her visions to be so accurate that the event seems rather implausible, but Elie Wiesel wrote it for a reason, and it may have been his way to foreshadow the coming tragedy. Even though they're "all in the same boat," stress and fear can make people do crazy things.
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