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Night Race Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

My father’s view was that it was not all bleak, or perhaps he just did not want to discourage the others, to throw salt on their wounds:

"The yellow star? So what? It’s not lethal …"

(Poor Father! Of what then did you die?) (1.73-75)

People’s racial identity becomes their death (or the marker of death), as symbolized by the yellow star.

Quote #2

Little by little life returned to "normal." The barbed wire that encircled us in did not fill us with real fear. In fact, we felt this was not a bad thing; we were entirely among ourselves. A small Jewish republic … A Jewish Council was appointed, as well as a Jewish police force, a welfare agency, a labor committee, a health agency–a whole government apparatus.

People thought this was a good thing. We would no longer have to look at all those hostile faces, endure those hate-filled stares. No more fear. No more anguish. We would live among Jews, among brothers … (1.79-80)

The Jews of Sighet, despite their containment in a ghetto, find hope in the brotherhood of racial and cultural identity as Jews.

Quote #3

I looked at my little sister, Tzipora, her blond hair neatly combed, her red coat over her arm: a little girl of seven. (1.159)

Knowing that the Germans were so concerned with maintaining the purity of their ideal Aryan race of blond-haired and blue-eyed people, knowing that Eliezer’s little sister, a Jew, has blond hair blurs the racial distinctions and makes them seem arbitrary.