Zeke Vanguardia Mrs. O’Hagan ELA 2 27 February 2023 Night Essay The Holocaust was an indescribable time in history, affecting millions of those innocent who were deemed unworthy by Nazi-German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, and his supposed perfect, Aryan race. Those considered unfit by the standards of the Aryan race, especially those of the Jewish race/religion, would undergo cruel, inhumane conditions and labor in concentration camps throughout Europe. In the novel, Night by Elie Wiesel, the author tells his personal account of his time spent throughout these concentration camps with his father. At such a young age, Elie and his family were forced out of their home and taken to a ghetto, where they would later be moved to Auschwitz Concentration …show more content…
When thinking about the challenges imposed at the concentration camps, most would assume the labor, treatment, and living conditions, but Wiesel’s story unravels other elements. Throughout his story, Wiesel reveals that family and cruel treatment have a crucial effect on one’s resilience. Throughout the story Night, Wiesel displays how family has impacted the resilience of those around him. At the beginning of his and his father’s time in the concentration camps, a young Pole gives them advice crucial to their survival, stating, “And now, here is a prayer, or rather a piece of advice: let there be camaraderie among you. We are all brothers and share the same fate. The same smoke hovers over all our heads. Help each other. That is the only way to survive” (Wiesel 41). This signifies the need for a sense of community and family when going through the concentration camps, as it would help ease the hardships they would endure during their stay. Any status of a prisoner held no meaning in these camps; in the eyes of the Nazis, everyone was vulnerable to the fate of early death. This makes it ideal for them to have camaraderie with those amongst themselves, as they will …show more content…
At the start of their time in the concentration camp Auschwitz, Elie and his father were separated from the rest of their family, which included his (Elie’s) mother and sisters. This is when Elie reveals his inner thoughts, “My hand tightened around its grip on my father. All I could think about was not to lose him. Not to remain alone” (Wiesel 30). After being separated from his mother and siblings, Elie was left with only his father. For all he knew, his father was the only person he had besides him in the camps, and by losing him, he would lose all hope and give in. Elie himself feared being left alone, and without his father, he would be left to his own devices. This moment in time illustrates how his father would give him resilience, as he was the only one Elie had left (at the time) who would provide him hope, aid, and support throughout their stay. This is one of the very first actions in which Elie hints that his father will be his driving motivation to keep pushing for survival, which we see later throughout the book. We see such a demonstration when Nazi officers had mistaken his (Elie’s) father as dead. In response, Elie yelled “No! He’s not dead! Not yet!”, and proceeded to hit his father harder and harder until his father had half-opened his eyes (Wiesel 99). This further portrays how much his father meant to Elie. As mentioned before, his father
Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer, the protagonist, is transported and moved to numerous concentration camps. His story, which is corresponding to Wiesel’s biography, is representative to the lives of a billion other Jews. Jews were stripped away from their families, beliefs, identity, and freedom. They could no longer express their faith in God or have the human right to live where desired. During the holocaust, nothing was fair, everything was dark and cruel.
The Transformation of Elie and his Father’s Relationship The Holocaust was one of the world's deadliest events in history. Before the holocaust begins Elie and his father are not close. His dad spends more time with other people and worrying about work than with his own family. The Holocaust greatly impacts their relationship.
Elie's father was all he had, until he didn’t. In the book Night Elie’s relationship with his father changes over time. First, he is relying in his father to keep him safe and protect him. Second, he is worrying about his father and hoping he stays unharmed. Lastly, his father dies and he forgets about him completely.
Before going to the camps Elie and his father was not very close. For example Elie father is unsentimental towards his own kids but very sentimental towards the community and its people. Elie said”My father was cultured man rather unsentimental. ”(Pg.4) This shows that Elie his father
Eventually, they were herded up and transported in cattle cars to concentration camps, where for most, was their last destination. Written on page 29, Elie says, “I didn’t know that this was the moment in time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever.” Upon first arrival at the concentration camp, women and men are separated. Elie never was able to see his mother and youngest sister from that point on as they were brutally murdered by the Nazis. Despite how devastated he was, he never gave up on his journey to freedom alongside his father.
In the camps, Elie and his father only had each other, and that changed the way they felt about each other from the very beginning. Elie had almost no relationship with his father prior to the holocaust. Back in his hometown of Sighet, Elie's father was a busy community leader, and his work gave him little time for his family. Elie recalls that his father "rarely displayed his feelings... and was more involved with the well welfare of others than with that of his own kin" (Wiesel
Which is where he later finds the kindness in people. And Because Elie had his dad around with him, I did not see much of him interacting with the people in the camps. Instead, Elie would constantly think about his dad and always trying (use a verb in past tense) to find his dad, so he can talk with him. Likewise, if it were me, I would be doing the same because I would be afraid of the days left for me to spend with my mom and I
Elie protects and helps his father as well as he does not sacrifice him for his own survival as so many sons have done to their fathers. However as days pass by, he starts to feel some resentment toward his father especially when he is unable to protect himself from the bestiality of the SS instead of pitying him. In addition to that, toward the end of their way to Buchenwald his father becomes weak and cannot move, maybe because of fatigue or loss of hope. He leaves his father and sleeps deeply, when he wakes up, he could not find him and searches for him half-heartedly because a thought tells him maybe he could increase his chance of survival if he was alone. Fortunately, he finds him, ”Father!
A moment that presented the bond between Elie and his father was during the train ride at the end, when the gravediggers were removing dead bodies off the car to create space and Elie starts to yell at his father, “Father! Father! They’re going to throw you outside” (Wiesel 99). His father was close to dying on the cattle car since snow was piling on top of everyone and the cold killed people in their sleep, but his father opened his eyes so slightly at the last moment before he was to be thrown off the train. This was not the only traumatic event that Elie was put through on his journey, the selection that had taken place multiple times at the camp to reduce the population.
Furthermore, Elie’s relationship with his father worsened as they spent more time at the concentration camp. In this scene, Elie’s father is extremely sick after having been in the concentration camp for a long time. After his father is gone in the morning and assumed to have been sent to the furnace because of his poor condition, Elie expresses to the reader how he did not necessarily feel sad after his father got sick and died. While explaining his emotions surrounding his fathers death,
The bond that Elie had with his father was his motivation to survive the torture he was put through. He spent his time in concentration camps focusing on keeping his father alive because if his father didn’t survive, “there was no longer any reason to live, any reason to fight” (99). Elie had no idea if his mother and sisters were still alive, and if he managed to survive the Holocaust, he needed his father to help him survive once they were liberated. He didn’t want to go into the world as an orphan, having witnessed and experienced horrors beyond imagination. Furthermore, he knew that if he focused on keeping his father alive, it would keep him alive too.
Jonah Wright English II Mrs. M. Scott February 21, 2023 Dehumanization of the Jews in Night Dehumanization is the denial of full humaneness in others and the cruelty and suffering that accompanies it. Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel, these accounts of dehumanization, starvation, and deprivation are shown. In the year 1944, The SS Officers transported the people of Sighet to a concentration camp called Auschwitz. There at Auschwitz was a form of punishment for the Jews, they experienced physical and mental torture identity loss and denial of food and water. These cruel treatments led to the dehumanization of the Jews which is exactly what Hitler planned.
Wake up, they’re going to throw you out the side!” (pg 99) shows the reader that midway through the story Elie still really cared about his father and did not want him to die. He still had hope that his dad could survive. However, this quote at the end of the story, “I no longer thought of my father,” (pg 113) showed that he lost all hope and only thought about himself and his own health due to the circumstances. Also, Elie was not the only son going through
No response. I would have screamed if I could have. He was not moving"(98).This is an example of how Elie cared about his father and he is feared that he would lose him. Over
Elie and his family were just a few out of millions of people who were sent to concentration camps. When Elie got there, he was separated from his mother and sisters. He and his father were not separated, which is good because that is what strengthened their relationship as a father and son. The relationship of Elie and his father evolves throughout the book. Their relationship in the past was taken for granted, but as the book progresses their relationship gets stronger.