Review Of All But My Life By Gerda Weissmann Klein

“Homeland is something one becomes aware of only through its loss, Gunter Grass.” In Peter Gay’s memoir, My German Question, he articulates what it was like living in Germany with the presence of the Nazis or in his own experience the lack there of. Peter lived in a family that didn’t directly practice Judaism and most German families didn’t perceive them as Jews until the Nazis defined what a Jew was to the public. The persecution of other Jewish families in Germany where far worse than what Peter experienced growing up. There was a major contrast between how Gay’s family was treated and how other Jews who actively practiced the religion in Germany were treated which played a contributing factor for why the family stayed so long before they left.

Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land is a memoir of Sara Nomberg- Przytyk, who spent a count of years in Auschwitz, at a concentration camp. She witnessed many unforgettable, yet gruesome things at the concentration camp; she describes all the horrible events and still seeks hope throughout the book. Nomberg- Prztyk is an unusual prisoner, and one of the special worker who worked at the hospital. Therefore, she got better treatment than other prisoners; she was even exempted from going to the gas chamber and always had enough to eat. She uses the special treatment to talk to people she comes across, and share their story.

The memoir begins with the author detailing his life prior to the onset of the war. He explains that he, “had a very happy childhood” that ended “too soon... thanks to Adolf Hitler”

Elie Wiesel shares his experiences in Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of Nazi’s concentration camps. Wiesel was one of the minority of Jews to survive the Holocaust. Unfortunately his family did not make it through with him, and this still has lasting effects. It is clear that Wiesel’s identity changed completely during his experiences in Auschwitz; he lost his faith in God and he became indifferent to his survival and the survival of his family members. Despite these hardships, however, he ultimately became a

Elie Wiesel was a young boy when he did survived the holocaust.. In his memoir Night, we follow his journey as a Jewish boy in a time where expressing your religion could mean life or death. Between living under the watch of Nazi regimes, trying to keep his father alive, and surviving the inhumanity of others, Elie’s had fought and lived through the genocide unlike any other. However, surviving the holocaust does not come without a price. Wiesel lived at the sacrifice of his faith and identity, which were left in fragments after the existence of evil that left a permanent scar on his life. At the start of life, a person will be given an identity that they will be able to shape and mold through experiences and beliefs.

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 Holocaust was an immoral machination orchestrated by the Nazi’s to eliminate any person who did not meet their criteria of a human. Millions were interned in camps all around Europe. Each person who survived the Holocaust has a different story. Within Elie Wiesel’s Night (2006) and the movie “Life is Beautiful” (2000) two different perspectives on the Holocaust are presented to audiences both however deal with the analogous subjects faced by prisoners. Inside both works you can find the general mood of sadness.

The severely cruel conditions of concentration camps had a profound impact on everyone who had the misfortune of experiencing them. For Elie Wiesel, the author of Night and a survivor of Auschwitz, one aspect of himself that was greatly impacted was his view of humanity. During his time before, during, and after the holocaust, Elie changed from being a boy with a relatively average outlook on mankind, to a shadow of a man with no faith in the goodness of society, before regaining confidence in humanity once again later in his life. For the first 13 years of his life, Elie seemed to have a normal outlook on humanity.

In the span of a lifetime one often faces many adversities that stand within their path.  While some challenges will be overcome easily, others will take a lot more tenacity. When in the face of adversity it is key not to give up. One should always strive to persevere through their hardships, no matter how severe they seem to be. The author of the memoir “Night” Elie Wiesel, vividly describes his experiences in the concentration camp of Auschwitz.

“‘I have terrible news,’ he said at last. ‘Deportation.’ The ghetto was to be completely wiped out. We were to leave street by street the following day” (Wiesel 11). Throughout the vast novel, Night,by Elie Wiesel, the protagonist Elie had gone through agonizing experiences, for the duration of the gruesome and unspeakable genocide.

Through character’s hope and perseverance in his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel conveys the theme that the love one holds for another is what fuels their will survive under strain. The Jews displacement by the Nazi’s downgraded them from their homes to filthy, plague-ridden, sewer like boxes of concrete that was Auschwitz. As a result of this many forgot their purpose to be alive. Wiesel shows that the need to survive those conditions was only supported by a sense of duty to one’s family to be there. When Stein says “Were it not for them, I would give up,”(45) he shows that their survival is the only thing keeping him upright.

“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.

The human condition is a very malleable idea that is constantly changing due to the current state of mankind. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the concept of the human condition is displayed in the worst sense of the concept, during the Holocaust of WWII. During this time, multiple groups of people, most notably European Jews, were persecuted against and sent to horrible hard labor and killing centers such as Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiesel uses complex figurative language such as similes and metaphors to display the theme that a person’s state as a human, both at a physical and emotional level, can be altered to extreme lengths, and even taken away from them, under the most extreme conditions.

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

Life as a Jew during the Holocaust can be very harsh and hostile, especially in the early 1940’s, which was in the time of the Holocaust. “Sometimes we can only just wait and see, wait for all the things that are bad to just...fade out.” (Pg.89) It supports my thesis because it explains how much the Jewish community as