While perhaps acceptable at first, it is shocking to see that even behind barbed wire, the people of Sighet still believe the Germans mean no harm. Referring back to the words of an adult Wiesel, ignorance truly seems to be a far worse tool for harm than hatred in the town of Sighet. The ignorance of what was going on in the war and particularly in Germany is what killed many. For a reference point to the story, Romania by 1944 was in a state of political disarray. The Axis offensive into the Soviet Union had been broken and the Red Army came increasingly close to capturing Romania. Meanwhile, in the air, Western Allied heavy bombers pounded Romania's oil refineries and industrial sector. It wouldn't be long before King Michael of Romania would organize a coup d'etat and join the Soviets, however, the German final solution would also increase its efforts, and as such was able to deport Wiesel and his family via cattle car within a matter of weeks after being put into the ghetto.
Upon arriving in the camp, they meet the horrible reality of what a death camp really is. A particular part of the book that I found interesting was how the prisoners who had managed to survive for some time passed down what little advice they could to the new inmates to help them survive, for example, having Wiesel lie about his age so as not to be incinerated. In fact, that very sentence is just a stark picture of what life was like in the camps. The fact that one could be incinerated like in a horror or science fiction movie is just too atrocious to even imagine. The biggest question for me is how Wiesel managed to maintain his sanity and as I progress in my reading, it appears more and more that he does so at the cost of his own humanity, his ethics, his soul. He must do very awful things to survive. Perhaps the most ironic and saddening part of the story was that if Wiesel and his family had only managed to elude capture for a few more months, Romania would have by then joined the Allies and been liberated.