Night, by Eliezer Wiesel

Well, Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel was just a boy when the Holocaust took place.  Elie recounts the many traumatic events that occured while he was displaced through several concentration camps.  Not only was he starved,  beaten and overworked, but he was mentally scarred, something that to him will last forever.  The things he saw, the pains he bore, the many tragedies that could not break him all happened to him in a matter of a few years.  Wiesel was a strong boy.  Physically, he did the work he was forced to do.  He was worked to the core, everything about him physically did not, could not work when he was finally freed.  He was beaten, and tossed about.  Luck kept him alive.  The decisions he made were crucial to his survival, but he did not know any consequences of his actions beforehand.  Instead of going with the children, he went with the men, who laboured intensely.  Most children were put to death at that point.  Seeing the ashes rise from the smokestacks puzzled him, until he realized what the ashes meant.  Thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions of innocent people were killed because of stereotype, greed, and hostility.  Elie would not give up.  He saw too many people collapse, freeze in the snowy onslaught during a bitter storm, and burn in the giant "ovens".  Each of those faces- they all had a face.  Sharp, clear, innocent faces of people who had families, who had lives, who each had the ability to change others' lives- burned a memory in Eliezer Wiesel that cannot be taken from him.  It is the true specifics that change how we see the war.  It was not just murder.  It was physical and mental torture, and then psycopathic murder.  A warm shower turned into a bitter death.  Shovels, blood, flesh, dirt, bodies-once people- altered Eliezer Wiesel's life.