What Is Elie Wiesel's Reaction To Night

On April 11, 1945, Harry J. Herder Jr. and his company discovered one of the many secret horrors of World War II that dotted the European landscape; the Buchenwald concentration camp. The battle hardened man who had seen his fair share of death and human suffering surveyed the camp with a sinking feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. Before his eyes lay human beings so starved they could not pick themselves up off of their bunks, children who had never seen the outside of the camp fence, partially clothed bodies and shaved heads. Shocked and disgusted, Harry J. Herder Jr. and two of his comrades then took a deeper tour of the camp. Eerie, and abandoned by the German soldiers lay the “medical rooms” with human organs floating in jars of liquid and the gallows where unruly prisoners were hung.

Thousands of Jewish prisoners were killed per day in concentration camps. The way the Nazis succeeded in killing this much Jews was by creating gas chambers and crematoriums. First, in the novel night, Elie Wiesel described how he witnessed dozens of “children being thrown into the flames.” Wiesel was told when he arrived to Auschwitz that “Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney.

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.

After the hangings, the prisoners said a prayer. But Eliezer says, “Why, but why would I bless His name?... He created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death” (Wiesel 67). Eliezer, and soon, the rest of the Jewish prisoners, wonders why God would let this happen. People were starting to not believe in God.

“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.

The first is a rebellious teenager who stole soup during the air raid. He tells the Kapo that he does not want to be blindfolded, “The Kapo wanted to blindfold the youth, but he refused,” (pg.62). And before he is hanged, “... the latter shouted, in a strong and calm voice: ‘Long live liberty! My curse on Germany!... ‘“ Although inhumanity is shown in forcing all the prisoners to look at the youth, the Jews are filled with a new sort of hope.

The people had already put aside their emotions for others, and began to give up all hope for a better life, and then the public executions made many give up their religious beliefs and hope for a nice afterlife. Whenever the gallows first showed up, and the first hanging of a boy took place, Elie thought, “this boy, leaning up against the gallows, deeply upset me”(Wiesel, 62). The sense of justice and that the good were rewarded and the bad were punished began to fade. The Jews can see that the judges in the camps can do as they please and choose who lives and dies, and that the sentences are not always fair. The crematorium did not involve them looking death in the face, but with the gallows they were dehumanized because they could not look away from the facts that life is not fair and just, and that their beliefs should be doubted.

Fear is Destructive Fear causes people to makes judgements. It’s what makes people cautious and skittish, mostly in unsafe situations. Without fear people’s life would be at risk. Throughout the memoir Night fear builds up over time, starting when the Germans taking over Sighet, they slowly start to take over their lives.

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer Wiesel narrates the legendary tale of what happened to him and his father during the Holocaust. In the introduction, Wiesel talks about how his village in Seghet was never worried about the war until it was too late. Wiesel’s village received advanced notice of the Germans, but the whole village ignored it. Throughout the entire account, Wiesel has many traits that are key to his survival in the concertation camps.

It was a new low for the German soldiers to kill a child, and it was this execution that made many of the Jews’ question the presence of God. Wiesel says, “That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (62). They felt remorse at the hanging of the pipel because he had been kind to them and was “loved by all” (Wiesel 60). So even though the prisoners had to watch similar hangings in Wiesel’s

Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of the pleasure. If one of us stopped for a second, a quick shot eliminated the filthy dog.” (Wiesel 85). This quote justifies the heartless actions of the SS men. While testing the emaciated prisoner’s endurance, without hesitation, the SS men proceeded to executing any Jewish hostage who dares to refuse

Most of the time, the SS lashed the Jews and publicly tortured them for no reason. For example, on pg. 65, Wiesel expounds, “Twenty- four, twenty- five!’ It was over. I had not realized it, but I had fainted.

With such dreadful conditions, the Jews began initiating resistance and uprisings. Even though the prisoners knew loss was unquestionable, they fought bravely and certain. The Jews wanted the future generation to know that they would never give up without a fight. The Nazi officers kept watch of the prisoners every second; the inhumanity of the guards murdered the spirit of the Jews. Because of the environment of the camps, a countless number of Jews died every day.

Mortifying. Earth shattering. Horrific. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel tells of his experience in the horrific concentration camp Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel was a 15 year old Jewish boy when his entire family was moved to a concentration camp.

The novel Night by Elie Wiesel, which was first published in 1958, tells a great first-hand account of a terrible event named the Holocaust. In this story, it gives a detailed memoir of a young kid named Eliezar who has to endure this appalling crisis. As the Holocaust continues to go on around them, he and his family remain optimistic about their future. Even though they were optimistic, the Holocaust finally closes in on them. Once this occurs they were pulled away from their homeland and relocated to their designated site where they were split by gender.