Universal Declaration Of Human Rights In Elie Wiesel's Night

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.

In Elie Wiesel’s acceptance speech of 1986 he stated that “when human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must –at that moment – become the center of the universe.” Considering the events that occurred in World War I, such as the Holocaust, I strongly agree with Wiesel’s statement about making those who are endangered our priority. It is the duty of those who inhabit this world to protect and set the imprisoned free regardless the circumstances. If no one has the courage to step up and do something to help, the oppressor will end up believing that treating people unjustly and forbid them from their freedom is indeed right.

How could someone kill or torture so many people for being a certain race? To start with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlines the 30 rights every person is given and they can not be taken away. These rights are not obeyed during the holocaust. Eliezer Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor is one of many jews that is experiencing the dehumanization by the Germans.

Elie questions how “is it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?” (Wiesel 32). Never expecting to witness such horrible things, Elie wonders how the atrocities had never been made public and known. There were so many people in the concentration camps that he expected someone to have shared their story and help others stay away from the concentration camps, yet he himself had been one to ignore the warnings. Elie states that he “could not believe that human beings were being burned in our times; the world would not tolerate such crimes” (Wiesel 33).

During the time of the Holocaust, many human rights were violated. Elie Wiesel was a survivor of the holocaust, and has written the book titled Night describing what life was like for him and others during the harsh time. His book has become very popular because is shows awareness of how bad the times were. Wiesel says, “The SS officers were doing the selection: the weak to the left; those who walked well, to the right.” (Page 96)

Unfortunately, these sacred rights have been disrupted on multiple occasions such as the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the killing of millions of Jews by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. Several confirmations about the infringement of human rights have been expressed in the Holocaust based novel Night by Elie Wiesel. Night is the life, sacrifices, difficulties and torture Elie faced throughout the Holocaust. The novel reveals numerous ruptures of human rights.

“The world would never tolerate such crimes”(33). This was a thought that Elie Wiesel had as he was greeted by the cruel reality of death, torture, and barbaric treatment that awaited him in the Nazi concentration camps. He was surrounded by death, witnessing the murder of children, losing his mother and sister, and watching his father die. Eleven million people died, yet he lived. Elie Wiesel went on to write the memoir Night.

Life in a concentration camp is unimaginably difficult and leaves many with great uncertainty. People must fight hard, have unspeakable grit, and go through life-changing events just to have a chance at the freedom they were unsure would ever come. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, we learn Elie was only 15 when he was taken from his home, left only with his father, and forced into multiple concentration camps throughout Hitler's reign. We’re let in on the unbearable experiences and effects concentration camps had on many of the innocent people forced to try to live life as normal there. Elie overcomes the tragedy and struggles brought on by the situation by changing the way he approaches and experiences life's battles.

For the amount of suffering they went through and the horrific acts that happened, it is important that the Holocaust never happens again in the future. Concentration camps educate people of the horrible past, and it is important to learn from them, however, some people feel that concentration camps should be

These people were belittled to nothing besides worthless animals in the eyes of many. The behavior of the Nazis, and their treatment toward these humans are an extreme violation in relation to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he describes

Will Human Rights ever be achieved? Will society forever go on, day to day, knowingly contributing to the violation of people’s inalienable rights? Human rights are something that many activists have tried to achieve til this day but failed. The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a detailed memoir, of the tragedy he and many other endured during the Holocaust. In the book, Night, Mr. Wiesel and family were Jewish, during the holocaust they were taken from their home and transferred to several concentration camps.

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.

To find a man who has not experienced suffering is impossible; to have man without hardship is equally unfeasible. Such trials are a part of life and assert that one is alive by shaping one’s character. In the autobiographical memoir Night by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, this molding is depicted through Elie’s transformation concerning his identity, faith, and perspective. As a young boy, Elie and his fellow neighbors of Sighet, Romania were sent to Auschwitz, a macabre concentration camp with the sole motive of torturing and killing Jews like himself. There, Elie experiences unimaginable suffering, and upon liberation a year later, leaves as a transformed person.

By definition, something that is fundamental is basic, essential, and involving all aspects of the subject at hand. Seeing that the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that there should be a universal respect for and observance of the inalienable human rights and fundamental freedoms set forth in it, who could deny a human these things? ‘Human’, in this instance, is used as an adjective to describe the rights, which are of and belonging to all members of the human race; regardless of race, religion, color, gender, or social status. In the memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel, he tells of his life as a young Jewish boy, and of the horrors he, his family, and others faced due to the stripping away of their rights by those who felt they had the power to do so. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, a story is told of discriminatory acts against many different people.

Moreover, the implementation of human rights protection has been inefficient and should be abandoned, according to some. Many cite the UN as having failed to implement their basic human rights goals, thus creating a failing organization. The topic of the argument is that the UDHR was formed in wake of Hitler’s Germany, as a way to prevent future genocides. Almost all of the concepts, rules, and approved conventions focus on the individual persons but do not account for the collective persons, which was the charter’s original main goal. The Genocide Convention, however does prescribe the protection of human groups, but focuses only on punishment, not prevention.