"When they came back, they told us that, in exchange for a gold watch, they had discovered that this was the last stop. We would be getting out here. Theere was a labor camp. Families would not be split up. Only the young people would go to work in the factories. The old men and invalids would be kept occupied in the fields. The barometer of confidence soared. Here was a sudden release from the terrors of the previous nights. We gave thanks to God"
The barometer of confidence soared. personifies confidence with the motion of soaring. This allows for the audience to comprehend that their confidence is strengthening and being lifted by comparing it to something relatable to human behavior.
One of Wiesel’s concerns in Night is the way that exposure to inhuman cruelty can deprive even victims of their sense of morality and humanity. By treating the Jews as less than human, the Nazis cause the Jews to act as if they were less than human—cruelty breeds cruelty, Wiesel demonstrates. In the ghetto, Eliezer recounts, the Jews maintained their social cohesion, their sense of common purpose and common morality. Once robbed of their homes and treated like animals, however, they begin to act like animals. The first hint of this dehumanized behavior on the part of the Jewish prisoners comes when some of the deportees, in the constraints of the cattle car, lose their modesty and sense of sexual inhibition. As the section progresses, the Jews become more and more depraved, overcome by their terror. Some of them begin to beat Madame Schächter in order to quiet her, and others vocally support those who are doing the beating. Wiesel suggests that one of the great psychological and moral tragedies of the Holocaust is not just the death of faith in God but also the death of faith in humankind. Not only does God fail to act justly and save the Jews from the cruel Nazis; the Nazis drive the Jews into cruelty, so that the Jews themselves fail to act justly.
The Jewish prisoners’ continual denial of what is happening around them reflects one of the major barriers in writing about the Holocaust. Until the Jews experience the horrors of Auschwitz, they cannot believe that such horrors exist. Even after having heard Moishe’s firsthand report, when the Jews arrive at Auschwitz, they still believe that it is merely a work camp. One can imagine, then, how difficult it is to convince others of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Wiesel reminds us that the Holocaust is almost too awful a story to convey, yet he insists that it is a story that must be told, because it is crucial that those who hear the story believe, and act on their beliefs, before it is too late.
The figure of Madame Schächter, who in her lunacy foresees the furnaces of Auschwitz, raises an important question about the boundaries between sanity and insanity in the context of the evils of the Holocaust. Madame Schächter, who is supposedly crazy, sees clearly into the future, whereas the other Jews, who are supposedly sane, fail to foresee their fate. Throughout Wiesel’s memoir, sanity and insanity become confused in the face of atrocity. One would think it insane to imagine the extermination of six million Jews, yet it occurred, efficiently and methodically. In the world of Auschwitz, then, normal standards of lunacy and sanity become confused, just as one’s sense of morality is turned upside down.
