Passage #1

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things; even were I condemned to live 
as long as God Himself."

Summary

In this passage Elie is talking about his first night in the camp.  He is talking about how he will never forget his first night there and how it changed the rest of his life.  How when he first saw the crematorium how he never forgot the faces of the children who were burned.  This was also the first time that he questioned his faith.  This was also the first time that he realized how all his dreams and plans in life were gone and from that day on his life plan was to just survive.

Point Of View

The author is talking from a first person point of view.  His point of view is extremely important because if it wasn’t in a first person point of view you wouldn’t be able to relate to the topic and it would be less sincere.  When the author says "Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever."  That really disturbed me.  The author being a Jew, his whole life was devoted just to his religion and for him to lose it was pretty much losing his own life.  If the author would have written this passage differently you wouldn’t be able to see how his whole life he had worked for one thing and then after he saw the crematory’s he turned his back on that work.