"I remember that I found the soup excellent that evening. . . ." (p.60--Night

The week after the air raid, the SS officers set up gallows and begin having hanging ceremonies during roll call. A strong, well-built boy from Warsaw is one of the first to be hanged for stealing. Unafraid of dying, his last words are, "Long live liberty! A curse upon Germany! A curse. . .! A cur--" Although Wiesel is surrounded by death all the time at the concentration camps, he is moved by the boy's calm manner. Another man, Juliek, is bored and just wants it to be dinnertime. This progression towards emotional numbness and violent self-centeredness is a kind of reverse character development: the prisoners do grow and mature, but instead regress into a obstinate kind of childlike, emotionally hollow state. Only rarely do we see infrequent displays of human emotion after this point...