1. Analyze Wiesel’s speech begins: “After Auschwitz, the human condition is not the same, nothing will be the same.” Identify where similar language is repeated later in his speech. What is the effect of this repetition?
Answers
After Auschwitz, the human condition is not the same, nothing will be the same."
Here heaven and earth are on fire.
I speak to you as a man, who 50 years and nine days ago had no name, no hope, no future and was known only by his number, A7713.
I speak as a Jew who has seen what humanity has done to itself by trying to exterminate an entire people and inflict suffering and humiliation and death on so many others.
In this place of darkness and malediction we can but stand in awe and remember its stateless, faceless and nameless victims. Close your eyes and look: endless nocturnal processions are converging here, and here it is always night. Here heaven and earth are on fire.
Close your eyes and listen. Listen to the silent screams of terrified mothers, the prayers of anguished old men and women. Listen to the tears of children, Jewish children, a beautiful little girl among them, with golden hair, whose vulnerable tenderness has never left me. Look and listen as they quietly walk towards dark flames so gigantic that the planet itself seemed in danger.
All these men and women and children came from everywhere, a gathering of exiles drawn by death.