Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel, a Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, acknowledged that “There is so much injustice and suffering crying out for our attention: victims of hunger, of racism, and political persecution, writers and poets, prisoners in so many lands governed by the left and by the right. Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free.” When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they believed that the Germans were “racially superior”and that Jews(their biggest enemy) were to be called “inferior.” As the “Final Solution” came, no Jew was safe. The Germans figured every way to get rid of them. One single gunshot wasn't enough. During this …show more content…
He did not think it was real and then realized how much he hated them. Since he knew they were the first oppressor they would encounter. To Wiesel they were the first faces too hell and death.
After Wiesel arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, he was given a number tattoo on his arm. The SS authorities used tattooing primarily as a means of identification. Since the Jews were forced to have these tattoos, their identity was taken away. Their personal identity that they had developed about themselves that had evolved over the course of their life was gone. Wiesel and the fellow jews were no longer what they used to be. They were stripped of the very last thing they had. After wiesel received the tattoo he admits to his new identity. Wiesel's aspects of his life that he had no control over, such as where he grew up or race, as well as the choices he chose before the holocaust. In fact he states that,“The three "veteran" prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.”(pg51)This shows how having the Jews have a tattoo on their arm gave the Germans a way for making Jews less than human.They knew that if they were to be tattooed it would be permanent. Leaving the Jews with a horrible permanent memory to carry for the rest of their lives. After all, now the Jews could all be considered the same.
At the beginning of the memoir, Wiesel introduced his life before the
Nearing the end of their arduous journey, the mutual dependence was slowly dwindling as Elie began to have to take care of his father. One example of this is when his father was sick and in the camp infirmary and had not been fed so Elie “gave him what was left of [his] soup. But [his] heart was heavy. [He] was aware that [he] was doing it grudgingly,’ (107). Being that he did this grudgingly, the reader is shown that, to Elie, taking care of his father had become more of an unwanted task rather than a kind action coming from his heart. Elie begins to see his own father as a thorn in his side much rather than his source support. His father is no longer there as a person who will provide motivation to survive but now instead a burden. In another instance, still in the infirmary, when his father pleaded for water and the officer came to silence him, Elie states, “ I didn’t move.
His attitude went reversed from being confident, as a religious and prestigious person within the Jewish community, to being scared with the inmates giving poor treatment to him. Wiesel was separated split from his mother and sister along with given the bare minimum to eat and drink. Therefore, it was not surprising when he felt scared and uncomfortable with his surroundings as he was not used to it. Furthermore, during the time when his father was slapped by a Gypsy inmate, Wiesel stood petrified with fear instead of retaliating back against his father’s adversary. He explored the rationale behind his lack of action through the text stating, “my father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent” (39). Even though the Gypsy inmate slapped Wiesel’s father, Wiesel did not stand up for this father considering how scared he was of the authority in Auschwitz, a concentration camp. This incident reflected on his change in character since the authority at Auschwitz dehumanized his father in front of everyone, and he did not do anything to defend his father. Earlier, the Jewish people were allowed to sit down at the second barrack of the Auschwitz camp. Wiesel’s father got up to ask to use the bathroom since he had a colic attack; however, the gypsy inmate in charge did not answer his question and slapped him. Because of Wiesel’s his
In the book Night by Elie Wiesel there are many instances where his use of imagery helps establish tone and purpose. For example Elie Wiesel used fire (sight) to represent just that. The fire helps prove that the tone is serious and mature. In no way did Wiesel try to lighten up the story about the concentration camps or the Nazis. His use of fire also helps show his purpose. “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times scaled. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw
First, the reader views Wiesel’s personality changes as a result of life in Auschwitz. Perhaps the most obvious change is his steadily increasing disinterest of religion. Before his internment, Wiesel demonstrates a growing interest in the religion of his parents. During the day, he studied Talmud, a legal commentary on the Torah, or the Jewish Ten Commandments. At night, he would worship at the synagogue, “to weep over the
A little over 70 years ago, Elie Wiesel survived a situation that many people could not even fathom. In 1944, Elie and his family were brought to Auschwitz where he nearly experienced death many times.
One of Adolf Hitler’s promises was to eliminate the Jewish race. In order for this to happen, you must first see people as less than human. Once you have accomplished this task, the mass murder of millions of people becomes easy. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the multitude of times he was seen as less than human, and how this affected his life while in concentration camps. The dehumanization of the prisoners not only crushes them, it causes them to become desensitized and often see each other as less than human.
Strong bonds built upon trust and dependability can last a lifetime, especially through strenuous moments when the integrity of a bond is the only thing that can be counted on to get through those situations. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he writes about his life spent in the concentration camps, while explaining the experiences and struggles that he went through. However, not everything during that period was completely unbearable for Wiesel. When Wiesel arrived at the first camp, Birkenau, the fear instilled in him and the loneliness he would have felt forced him to form a stronger attachment to his father. That dependence towards his father gave Wiesel a reason to keep on living. In turn, his father was able to support Wiesel and make the experiences in the camps a bit more manageable.
The bond between Wiesel and the Jewish children counteracts the Nazi's attempts at suppressing their faith and says that despite their attempts at suppression, Judaism was and still is alive. During this time, Wiesel was so deeply affected by the Holocaust that he believed that as a Jew, he had an obligation to bear witness. He felt this way due to him knowing how badly other Jews were treated, therefore making him believe that if he was somehow saved and other Jews were tortured and killed, then he would not be able to live with himself. This selfless behavior by Wiesel is also demonstrated during his public humiliation by Idek when, while being beaten, he states "I was thinking of my father. He was suffering more than I." These selfless concerns highlight Wiesel's sympathy towards other prisoners and express his feelings of having a "moral obligation" to live through the Holocaust.
Firstly, Wiesel is bothered by the fact that everyone in the world can remain silent while the Jews and the others in the concentration camps are being put through such terrible torture. Eliezer asks, “How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?”(32) There were numerous people that eventually found out what was happening at these concentration camps, but chose to turn a blind eye. Although they were not directly involved in the slaughtering of the Jews, they did remain silent during this time and by ignoring it they are encouraging the
Wiesel wants to show people how awful these camps were and how basically the whole world new about it, but they did not do anything to stop it because it was not them who it was happening to, so they did not think that it was a problem.
In Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, Wiesel alludes to the book of Leviticus when he says that his life was “seven times cursed” and to the book of Revelation when he states that he was “seven times sealed.” Wiesel alludes to Leviticus, which describes how God will punish the people who go against his will. He alludes to the book of Leviticus in order to illustrate the atrocities that he had encountered during his days at the concentration camps. The horrid sights that Wiesel saw during his first night at the concentration camp caused him to lose his faith in God. According to Wiesel, due to his abandonment of faith in God, he was harshly punished. The punishments were as severe as the punishments that God threatened to enforce in Leviticus. Later, Wiesel alludes to the text of
“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”, said Elie Wiesel the author of night. Elie Wiesel is a holocaust survivor, he went through 5 different concentration camps. He was dehumanized, malnourished, and abused. He lost all his possessions, his family, and his humanity. In Elie Wiesel’s “Night”, the German Army dehumanizes Elie Wiesel and the jewish prisoners by depriving them of family, food, and self esteem.
In the May of 1944, Wiesel is first sent to Auschwitz. This is where he, along with the other Jews, learn how people are no longer treated like human beings. They are not treated like human beings anymore because, they are forced to give up the things that mean a lot to them such as their hair, shoes, and even their lives if they are not considered strong enough to be working. Not only do they realize that, but they just can not come up with an answer to why people could be so harsh and heartless. Wiesel starts to think to himself, “ How could it be possible for them to burn people, children, and for the world to keep silent?” (Wiesel 41). How is possible that any human would want to hurt a child? How can others
Elie Wiesel faces many conflicts throughout this memoir. In the memoir, Night, by Elie wiesel, Hitler works hard to eradicate the Jewish people. Fallaciously, he forces Jews into thinking they aren’t going to be harmed. Adolf Hitler houses all Jewish people in death camps for he is indignant and he needs revenge after the World War. Also, Hitler is being hypocritical because he says the only worthy people are Aryan people, but he isn’t even Aryan. He often instructs the Nazi Soldiers to make all Jewish people despondent about life. The Germans are to have no decorum with the Jews. They are told to starve, beat, and punish the prisoners. Throughout the story, Wiesel struggles with staying alive and with helping his father stay alive in aspiration
Hell bent on creating a perfect “Aryan” race, Hitler used propaganda and lies to work his way into the government and into peoples minds. He and the Nazi party were weapons of mass destruction, killing anyone in their path. The Jews, above all, were Hitler’s main choice of prey. He blamed the Jews for all his failures and the failures of Germany and convinced others of the same thing. And the Jews knew this. The people in concentration camps were always asking themselves if God was real, whether they were going to eat that night, and how long they were going to be stuck in hell. In a time where the Jews were questioning everything about the world, Hitler was the only constant. Wiesel expresses this by writing “I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone had kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people,” (81). God had failed them and put them in hell with their friends and family were dying around them. No matter what they did, the Jews knew that whatever Hitler said he would do he’d follow