Night

http://www.grandretort.com/index.php/trackback/34/

The link above goes to "The Grand Retort" It is Sanger's essay on "Night" by Elie Wiesel. I read this book back in high school and remember how different my reaction was than that of my classmates. Some didn't care or get it, but most were so full of sympathy. I was angry. I didn't talk about it much, it was high school and I didn't want to push the fact that my opinion was different. The nuns chalked it up to the fact that I couldn't "grasp" it. That made some sense. I grew up in a very homegenous enviroment. There was nothing easier than growing up Irish Catholic in Boston in the 60s and 70s. I did not experience anything close to discrimination in my childhood. I was surrounded by people determined that I understand other people and cultures in the context that I was the luckiest of all. My parents provided a comfortable, loving childhood in the land of the free. So how could I judge Jews in Germany? Where did I get off thinking they should have fought to the death? But that was what I felt. Now that I am much older (how it pains me to say that!) and have read and heard and lived so much more than in high school, I still feel this. It's still a comfortable life in safe place so I'll keep my voice down.