Transformation

Throughout the experience in the concentration camps, many were forced to transform from children to adults, no matter what age you were. The conditions were so horrible that it's so difficult to explain how it truly was. Some had transformed without knowing it.

"Then, as if waking from a deep sleep, he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours.
I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked" (Wiesel 39).

Elizer's experiences changed everything about his life. This transformation was not, by any means, the best way to move from childhood to manhood. Transforming because of a tragic event can cause a major change in someone's personality and lifestyle, such as those who lived through the Nazi Holocaust.

"I shall not describe my life during that period. It no longer mattered. Since my father's death, nothing mattered to me anymore" (Wiesel 113). "Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That's all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread" (Wiesel 115).

Many of the inmates were starved so bad that nothing but food mattered to them. They forgot about their past and being free was their future. They would never be the same.