Those Forgotten Shall Be Remembered
Traumatic experiences are where the most emotional moments happen in life, many times; it can’t be explained truly and completely unless you were there in that moment. Just imagine having to live the horrors of Auschwitz, you were exposed to children and newborns being thrown into pits of hell-fire; men, women, and children as the dogs they were so proclaimed to be by the Fascist Nazis. When reading a first-hand account of these atrocities and the emotional struggles that come from whence the time he spent in Auschwitz; Elie Wiesel’s short story Night shows the true emotions of an impacting nature. You can’t read this story without feeling a loss of any cockiness; you can’t read this without feeling all
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The Jews and those of the oppressed were crying out, “How was it possible that man, woman, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real. A nightmare perhaps... (32).” These outcasts of the “Aryan race” arguably experienced the worst this world has to offer, unspeakable and unbearable conditions to even exist in, they lived in the end of hope; they cried out with their only breath for this world to listen, just as the smoke consumed their hope, their lives, and their existence. Grimly, these “inmates of the European prison” faced not only a physical torture/murder of their bodies, but also a crushing blow to their mind, soul, and faith throughout the second war of the world. At the age of 15, Elie survived through the events that stole his life from him; only to leave him in a state of emotional duress, “Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke... these moments that murdered my god and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. (34)” The Nazis were as malevolent el Diablo himself; they played twisted mind games such as these, “We …show more content…
If I was going to kill myself, this was the time. ... fifteen steps to go... No. Two steps from the pit, we were ordered to turn left and headed into barracks. (33-34)” Elie was willing to kill himself just to avoid the impending mass burning he thought he was fated to go to, and by tricking the Jews they managed to severely demoralize and drive some to actually commit suicide; they cared not if the Jews died, they were of no significant value. Inmates were broken after this relentless torture; we wonder why there wasn’t a mass revolt within the camps, and this is probably why, they had no will to resist oppression anymore. The sickest part of this all is that of the mass dehumanization played surprisingly by the entire people of Deutschland, now not all people played these sick game; most of the aggression was enforced by the German army. Moishe the Beadle was one of the first to experience this cruelty, “The Jews were ordered to get off... They were forced to dig huge trenches. ... When they had finished... the Gestapo began theirs. ...they shot their prisoners...
In Night one of the ways that the Jews were dehumanized was by abuse. There were beatings, “I never felt anything except the lashes of the whip... Only the first really hurt.” (Wiesel, 57) “They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs.
It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.
In Night. People in concentration camps tried to protect each other but struggled very hard to do so. Sometimes, they barely had a chance to begin with. For example, Elie witnessed someone kill himself because they already committed all he had left to taking care of a family member and was stuck. “A terrible thought crossed my mind: What if he had wanted to be rid of his father?
From the small town of Sighet in Transylvania to the huge concentration camps of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, the author and victim of the book Night, the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Wiesel is a 15 year old Jewish boy who was captured by the Germans or “Nazis” during WWII. He went through an overwhelming amount of trauma, like when he got separated from his mother and sisters and watching his father suffer an unbearable amount of pain that eventually killed him. The fact is, power is a tool that can corrupt itself and others, it can ruin people’s lives and it can do that without people even realizing it.
The characterization of Moshie and Mrs. Shachter shows the indifference and denial of the Jews of Sighet. The chilling juxtaposition of a beautiful landscape containing a camp of death illustrates how the world not only was indifferent to the inhumane suffering, but also continued to shine brightly as if nothing really mattered. This timeless theme of denial and its consequences during the Holocaust echoes the struggles of those in our time who are persecuted solely due to their beliefs. The reader takes away the important lesson of never turning away from those who need it greatest, each time one reads Elie Wiesel’s memoir,
“Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind. ”- Shania Twain.
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.
World War II had been raging for two years and was bout to enter Sighet. The Germans attempted to commit genocide on the 'lesser ' races, particularly Jews. Through the brutality witnessed, acts of selfishness, the death of his father, and the loss of his faith, Elie changed. Elie became a young man with a strong sense of mortality through it all. By the end of the war, Elie claimed to see himself as "A corpse contemplating me."
Concentration camps outside the reach of German Justice Authorities were a place where the SS could kill prisoners, which later became sites for the systematic murder of individuals or small groups of people. Those groups included Soviet prisoners of war, members of national resistance groups, groups of partisans, and the “Night and Fog” prisoners from Western Europe. German authorities created detention facilities to confine
“A traumatic experience robs you of your identity” (Dr.Bill). Concentration camps during the agonizing Holocaust disallowed their prisoners to obtain a personal identity. The renowned memoir, Night, written by Holocaust survivor, Eliezer Wiesel, published in 1954 expands the apprehension of the life altering challenges and torment the Jewish society encountered from 1933 to 1945. Identity consists of an individual's distinctive characteristics, beliefs and mannerisms which was forbidden for the Jewish hostages of the Holocaust to attain. Elie’s identity was shaped and reshaped by the traumatic experiences the Jewish community persevered through.
After going through so much, many people do not have the same mindset as they did before. Being tortured and watching others being tortured changes a person’s life, especially Elie’s, his father’s, Moshe the Beadle’s, and Rabbi Eliahou’s. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, shares his own experience of going through a concentration camp, and it is clear that many things in his life changed
In which millions of Jews were innocently killed and persecuted because of their religion. As a student who is familiar with the years of the holocaust that will forever live in infamy, Wiesel’s memoir has undoubtedly changed my perspective. Throughout the text, I have been emotionally touched by the topics of dehumanization, the young life of Elie Wiesel, and gained a better understanding of the Holocaust. With how dehumanization was portrayed through words, pondering my mind the most.
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.
Night Critical Abdoul Bikienga Johann Schiller once said “It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers and sons”. But what happens when the night darkens our hearts our hearts? The Holocaust memoir Night does a phenomenal job of portraying possibly the most horrifying outcomes in such a situation. Through subtle and effective language, Wiesel is able to put into words the fearsome experiences he and his father went through in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. In his holocaust memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel utilizes imagery to show the effect that self-preservation can have on father son relationships.
The Gestapo also used menacing methods of interrogation, such as drowning a prisoner in a bathtub filled with ice-cold water, beatings of the person with whips and burning their flesh with a soldering iron . If the person wasn’t arrested and tortured to death, they would be sent by the Gestapo to concentration camps which were spread around Germany. These briskly made prison camps had terrible conditions while prisoners were forced to undertake hard labour, according to which they should “work to death.” The inmates were rarely given nutritious food or appropriate medical care and clothing. It is estimated that at least ten million prisoners have died within these concentration camps.