A memoir of the holocaust written by Ellie Wiesel, “Night” is a summarization of Wiesel’s personal experience as a young Jewish boy during World War II. Though the fear, anguish, and sorrow of the Holocaust may never truly be depicted properly from all angles, this short novel provides reader’s with a further look into the Holocaust from a Jewish prisoner point of view. Learning about this dark time in history is not ideal for many people, nonetheless it is very important that we must be aware of the world we live in. Learning through words written directly from a Holocaust survivor is a different experience than learning through statistics and books based on information released. Wiesel’s interpretation of the holocaust is factual information …show more content…
ix), Wiesel writes, “All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless. Was there a way to describe the last journey in sealed cattle cars, the last voyage towards the unknown?”. Elie struggled to confine his story into one short novel and he rewrote this book many times. He battled with the language barrier from Yiddish to English, and feared he would not accurately portray things for what they were. Elie’s use of dialogue among prisoners and officers plays a major role in this book, and allows readers to interpret the wicked and cruel setting. Providing direct quotes and real experiences, Elie Wiesel notably paints a dark and evident picture of the holocaust for all …show more content…
Those who were unfit to work were killed immediately. Babies and children were burnt by the truckload, and elderly people shot on the spot. The Jews were forced to watch hangings of those who disobeyed orders, one of which being a small child. At this point the prisoner’s only motive is their own survival, and their faith in their God is diminishing. Eliezer loses faith in not only his God, but also himself and the people around him. Months go by working in a concentration camp, and Eliezer must undergo an operation for a foot injury to avoid amputation. During Eliezer’s stay in the infirmary, the camp was evacuated due to the Russians advancement. Many prisoners wished to succumb to their death rather than continue on this timeless journey. The prisoners were ordered to march to Gleiwitz, running 50 miles in a snow storm. Many of the prisoners did not survive this march as a result of the harsh weather and severe exhaustion. Once the Jews arrived in Gleiwitz they were shoved into cattle cars yet again. Leaving Gleiwitz there were 100 Jews packed in the cattle car, and upon arrival at the final camp, Buchenwald, there were a mere 12 prisoners left. Eliezer and his father Shlomo manage to stay alive-and to stay together. Having one another was a key part in their survival for means of motivation and support. Later in Buchenwald, Shlomo dies of dysentery and physical wounds. Eliezer holds on and maintains his
Eliezer and his father got separated from his mother and younger sisters. For months in the concentration camps, Eliezer witnessed inhumane doings that scarred him for the rest of his life. He was forced to work at Buna, a factory, and run on a daily basis to keep himself alive. He became malnourished because of the unappetizing food that they served. He and other Jews were punished and beaten for no reason.
“Every few yards, there stood an SS man, his machine gun trained on us. Hand in hand we followed the throng.” ( pg. 29) Eliezer's instinct for survival outweighs everything else. Although Eliezer and his family did not want to go to Auschwitz, they went because they were threatened if they did not comply. The SS guards would have killed anyone who did not follow orders, so they left their home and everything they have every known in order to survive.
Eliezer began to lose faith in God and others around him. After a month Eliezer undergoes an foot operation. While he is healing in the infirmary he heard that Russian are a dancing and will liberate the camp so the Nazis decided to evacuate to Gleiwitz concentration camp in the middle of a snowstorm. The old and sick stayed but Eliezer and his father March with the other prisoners. Then rides a train to Buchenwald.
In Night, Elie Wiesel survives an attempted genocide many have heard of but few truly known, the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel doesn’t know how he survived saying, “I was weak, rather shy; I did nothing to save myself,” (p. vii). However, he knows his survival and testimony has placed him as a, “witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory,” (p. viii). What follows is a summary of Elie’s auto-biography Night that seeks to answer whether or not it is effective as a witness of the Holocaust; a comparison of the power of one voice versus statistics; and an inquiry as to what extent this account of individuals struggling to survive impacts
The SS officers bark at the prisoners to quicken their pace as they march through a harsh blizzard, and Eliezer can no longer bear the pain he feels. He desires to end his life by collapsing onto a pillow of snow, but he must keep persist and carry on for his father, as he recalls “The idea of idea of dying began to fascinate me… My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me” (86). Eliezer had someone worth living for, and he claims his father was the reason he made it out of the concentration camps alive after the Jews were liberated. If it were not for his father, Eliezer may have taken his last breath.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the personal tale of his account of the inhumanity and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a young Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. Wiesel and his family are deported to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must learn to survive with his father’s help until he finds liberation from the horror of the camp. This memoir, however, hides a greater lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation.
In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.
Eliezer has to learn how to adapt to not having as food as he used to, being beaten for no reason, and watching daily hangings. Eliezer specifically remembers one particular hanging of a young boy, a pipel, whose master has been gathered arms for the resistance. Eliezer said “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… ” Eliezer remembers how the child cried and remained alive for the next half an hour, before his body finally gives out and the child dies. Towards the end of the book, as the group that Eliezer and his father are in keeps running around Germany, and Eliezer has a choice to give up and die on the side of a road, but he continues to run because of his father. Eliezer says “My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me.
The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in history. It just so happened to be the cause of six million deaths. While there are countless beings who experienced such trauma, it is impossible to hear everyone's side of the story. However, one man, in particular, allowed himself to speak of the tragedies. Elie Wiesel addressed the transformation he underwent during the Holocaust in his memoir, Night.
A living corpse Do you think the holocaust could happen again? Do you think if people aren 't aware of history that it can repeat self? If people aren 't aware of what happened in the holocaust and how horrific it was, then people wouldn 't know what to do if it happened again and people wouldn 't know how to prevent it from happening again. This memoir points out the worst parts of a personal experience of Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor.
Chapter One Summary: In chapter one of Night by Elie Wiesel, the some of the characters of the story are introduced and the conflict begins. The main character is the author because this is an autobiographical novel. Eliezer was a Jew during Hitler’s reign in which Jews were persecuted. The book starts out with the author describing his faith.
The Red army started advancing quickly towards Buna, and the Jews must evacuate. Elie and the other Jews then march through extremely frigid weather, and the SS officers expected them not to stop until they were told. They practically run, and if they stumbled or stopped, they either got shot or trampled. Elie did an excellent job at elaborating on the horribleness of it all, he explained, “I don’t think he was finished off by an SS, for nobody had noticed. He must have died, trampled under the feet of the thousands of men who followed us.”
In a span of 10 years, the Holocaust killed over 7 million people, that’s just as much as the population of Hong Kong. In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel shares his experience on how he survived the Holocaust and what he went through. How he dealt with the horrors and even to how he felt of his dad’s death and how he saw himself after it was all over. As he tried to publish it he was constantly turned down due to the fact of how horrid and truful it was. He still tried and tried until it was finally published.
Eliezer and his father rely on one another to survive through the Holocaust. Together they encounter the cruelty of the Nazis, the lack of compassion from the prisoners, as well as the difficulty of simply surviving. They remain strong together unlike other father-son relationships seen in the novel. A majority of the prisoners gravitate towards self preservation while Eliezer chooses to remain with his father. Eliezer does exhibit ambivalence in continuing to help his father because the conditions of the Holocaust continually make it harder to make others a priority than oneself.
It is a common assumption among numerous people in the world that the Holocaust never existed. In fact, almost fifty percent of the world population never even heard of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel helped people around the world learn about the Holocaust through his book “Night.” He wanted people to see the bravery, courage, and guilt of the Jews through his book. “Night” shows the horrific and malicious acts in the German concentration camps during the Holocaust.