"Today the sun rose bright and clear for the first time from the horizon of mud. It is a Polish sun, cold, white and distant, and only warms the skin, but when dissolved the last mists a murmur ran through our colourless numbers, and when even I felt its lukewarmth through my clothes, I understood how men can worship the sun."
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Everyone knows that we have many things to thank for. Just as I sit here, right now, writing this journal, I know that I have to be thankful that I have a computer to write this in, a brain to think of what to write, two working hands that can type what I think, eyes to read what I have typed, a book to read and write a journal about, a teacher who will read this, etc. There are so many other things that are present all around us, which we take for granted. I guess if one goes to Auschwitz, one begins to realize how precious everything around one is. In this chapter, Primo Levi describes a good day that he had, and how lucky he felt that he could have this happy day. When I first read it, I thought it wasn't very good at all. It sounded like what my bad day would be like. However, because Levi had suffered through freezing weather, when the first sun appeared, although it did not instantly warm the land, it was a relief to know that there still was a sun, amidst the cold winds of winter. Levi also praises that he received more soup than usual. All the times when I had just thrown away my food because I didn't like it all came back to me. I had never learnt to thank anything that God had prized me in my life, and only by reading upon the misfortunes of others did I finally realize this to the fullest extent.
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