It is a book like no other. And for the students in Alecia Wilder's sophomore English classes at Hanford High School, it was a reading experience like no other. They recently finished reading Elie Wiesel's book, "Night," a searing account of how Wiesel, as a teenager, watched his entire family perish in Auschwitz. Five of Wilder's students discussed Thursday what they got out of the book.

Suffice it to say that this was wasn't the kind of dull textbook reading they often have to wade through.

This was raw, it was visceral and it hit home for Danielle Van Baren, Chelsa Hawk, Ashley Engbrecht, Shelby Ballin and Aliaksandr Karostsik.

"Never anything like this," Chelsa said. She had gone through The Diary of Anne Frank, but it all took place before Anne and her family got shipped to a concentration camp, where she and most of them died.

As they read, they identified with Wiesel.

Shelby said she "could feel his pain."

Chelsa said she watched Wiesel grow numb to the horrors around him, to the point where he could watch people die and feel nothing, just a gnawing hunger for more food.

This book sugarcoats nothing. It takes you right into the mind of an idealistic, God-fearing young kid as he gets hammered with some of the worst evil the world has ever seen.

"It shows the harsh reality of the world. It's just the harsh, brutal truth," Ashley said.

The contrast between life in Hanford and life in Auschwitz wasn't lost.

"It's beyond anything we've ever experienced," Aliaksandr said.

They asked themselves how anybody could do this. How Hitler could mesmerize so many people.

In the end, they didn't have a clear response.

"You can't come up with an answer. You just ask more questions," Shelby said.

There was also some debate about whether it could happen in the United States.

Ashley noted that it is happening in Darfur now, and it happened in Rwanda in the 1990s.

But the U.S.?

"There'd be too much of an outcry. I don't think anyone would stand for it," Danielle said.

Ashley noted that the U.S. government did round up Japanese residents into internment camps during World War II, but they weren't worked to death or gassed like the prisoners in Auschwitz.

As for the guards and others who operated the Nazi death camps, the students generally disagreed with the idea that they were monsters.

"I think the guards were probably like a lot of people. (Germany) was in such a state of devastation, they believed what Hitler said," Chelsa said.

But, said Shelby, "they still (had) the right not to do it, they still went along."

"Hitler kind of seduced them," Aliaksandr said.

But Ashley drew parallels between hate crime in the U.S. and the massive hate crime perpetrated against the Jews.

So what impact did this book have on these five teenagers, with relatively comfortable lives in Hanford?

Aliaksandr said it made him want to learn more about World War II.

Shelby was struck that "problems we think are big aren't big compared to what they went through. That I live in a very good environment."

"It really makes me want to live what I believe in. (Wiesel) never gave up. He was determined not to give in to his enemies."

"It made me realize how much people can change," Danielle said, noting that Wiesel lost much of his religious faith in Auschwitz.

For Alecia Wilder, it was a rare chance to see her students get intensely involved in a book.

"Kids who normally never pick up a book will read this book," she said.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2432

(May 10, 2008)