Elie Wiesel's Night
"It's over. God is no longer with us."
Ang "It's over. God is no longer with us." ang isa sa mga mabigat na binitawang salita ng isa sa mga "rabbi" na kasama ni Wiesel sa "concentration camp" noong nakaraang ikalawang digmaang daig-dig.
Ang librong Night ay tungkol sa karanasan ng hudyo na si Elie Wiesel sa kamay ng mga Nazi. Bata pa lamang siya noong dinala siya kasama ang kanyang pamilya sa Auschwitz. Dito na nagsimula ang isang napakahabang pagbabago na naranasan ni Wiesel. Sa lahat ng karahasan at kasamaan na kanyang nakita, unting-unti niyang nakita ang pagguho ng pananampalataya at paniniwala ng marami sa Diyos, at isa rin siya dito.
Bago pa man mangyari ang pagdukot ng mga Nazi sa mga hudyo, masasabi nating mapayapa ang kanilang lugar. Halos lahat sa kanila ay napakarelihiyoso at naniniwala sa Diyos, at makikita natin ito sa paglalarawan na ginawa ni Wiesel sa unang bahagi ng "Night". Noong unang napabalitaan ang mga karahasan na ginawa ng mga Nazi, wala sa kanila ang naniwala. May isang "rabbi" pa nga ang nagsabing "Nothing will happen to us, for God needs us."(Legends, 124)
Ito ang paniniwala ng karamihan sa mga hudyo noong mga panahong iyon, at makikita natin ang kanilang pagtingin sa Diyos. Kahit na may mga inaabuso na, tuloy parin ang kanilang paniniwalang ang Diyos ang bahala sa kanila, at hindi papayagan ng Diyos na masaktan sila.
Maihahambing ko ang unang bahagi na ito sa kwento ng punong tagapagtanong kung saan kanyang kinuwestiyon ang pagbalik ni Kristo. Kung titignan natin, nariyan na sa harap ng punong tagapagtanong si Kristo ngunit hindi parin siya tunay na naniwala. Sa isang banda, masasabi nating nanatiling bulag ang punong tagapagtanong. Bulag sa anong paraan? Bulag siya sapagkat nasa harap na niya ang mga sagot sa kanyang mga problema ngunit nanatili ang kanyang mga kwestiyonableng paniniwala.
Tulad ng punong tagapagtanong, nanatiling bulag ang mga hudyo sa mga nangyayari sa mga panahong iyon. Hindi natin masasabing kwestiyonable ang kanilang paniniwala sa Diyos ngunit kwestiyonable ang kanilang pagtingin sa Diyos. Naging arogante sila sa kanilang paniniwalang "walang mangyayari sapagkat kailangan sila ng Diyos" at nanatili ang kanilang paniniwalang ganito, kaya't laking gulat nalang nila nang madala na sila sa mga "concentration camp".
Noong naranasan nila ang karahasan at hirap sa "concentration camp", wala sa kanilang makapaniwalang nangyayari nga ang mga nakikita nila. Hindi nila lubos mapaniwalaang hinayaan ng Diyos na mangyari ang mga kasamaan sa kanila sa pamamagitan ng walang humpay at walang awang pagsunog ng mga katawan.
The unimaginable actions from German authorities in the concentration camps of the Holocaust were expected to be tolerated by weak prisoners like Wiesel or death was an alternate. These constant actions from the S.S. officers crushed the identification of who Wiesel really was. When Wiesel’s physical state left, so did his mental state. If a prisoner chose to have a mind of their own and did not follow the S.S. officer’s commands they were written brutally beaten or even in severe cases sentenced to their death. After Wiesel was liberated he looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t even recognize who he was anymore. No prisoner that was a part of the Holocaust could avoid inner and outer turmoil.
Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. He is a Jewish man who is sent to a concentration camp, controlled by an infamous dictator, Hitler. Elie is stripped away everything that belongs to him. All that he has worked for in his life is taken away from him instantly. He is even separated from his mother and sister. On the other side of this he is fortunate to survive and tell his story. He describes the immense cruel treatment that he receives from the Nazis. Even after all of the brutal treatment and atrocities he experiences he does not hate the world and everything in it, along with not becoming a brute.
When he was arrested, Mama his wife moved all the children to the camp to keep the family safe and together, and this was the beginning of a terrible time. Their home was the safe place for their family, a place to spend time together. But during and after the war, they did not have a home. He changed his job some times, and he preferred to choose a job to made more money. He was with the Japanese culture, which left Japan because he was ashamed of his family’s social status. Before the war, Papa who never gave up and tried to solve troubles. Papa could not continue the same job that he had before the war. He was not the same person with the same abilities. “He kept abusing Mama and there seemed to be on way out of it” (Manzanar, 71). Papa drank heavily and passed out frequently and then abused Mama. He was sad and depressed; he did not leave the barracks. Papa had become weak, learning how to be a cook, a mechanic, a handyman, and he learned some abilities that earlier did not have any time to do that. The second year in camp, the family moved to another barrack by the name of Manzanar with apple trees around it. His birth country was at war with America and he was not protected by the American Constitution because he was not a citizen and he looked like the enemy. After that he was in mental
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
“Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.” (Wiesel 2006, p. 34) Elie Wiesel is a humanitarian but better known as a holocaust survivor and the author of the book Night. Elie recounts the horrors of his experience throughout the book and revisits times which he had not touched upon in years. His book initially only sold a few copies but later on through this renewed interest, Elie Wiesel’s book skyrocketed to fame and he started his journey in his humanitarian activities which in turn earned him a Nobel peace prize and resulted in his famous speech, Hope, Despair, and Memory. In Elie Wiesel’s speech, Hope Despair and Memory Elie Wiesel reminds us through his use of pathos and ethos as a speaker of the despair that humankind can create, but through our recollection and memories obtained from such despair we can summon the future with hope of change.
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.
Wiesel talks of feeling that he is stronger than God. He sees those around him as being weak because of their need for God. Needing anything while in captivity can only make him weaker and more vulnerable. Because Wiesel feels abandoned and has calloused over his need for God, he feels stronger than the rest of the Jewish people- stronger even than the One they need.
Over 84 years ago the holocaust had just begun. And it ended about 12 years later. During this period a man with the name of Elie Wiesel had been imprisoned because of his religion. 5 years after his camp, he was staying in was liberated, he wrote a book called Night. For anyone who has ever read Night by Elie Wiesel, you may have picked up on some different reading styles throughout the story such as injections, similes and metaphors, cause and effects statements and uses of foreshadowing that helps to present an impressionistic style that is unique and empowers the comprehensive message in his influence memoir. World War II was a bad time in history, connected with the first war that happened. There were a lot of tragic events in the war. One of the events was the holocaust. During the holocaust not many people knew about it while it was happening. There wasn’t a lot of communication from people inside the camps. The majority of the people that were sent to the camps were jews and other races. They had no idea what was going to happen to them or what they were there for. Some did survive life in the camps,
The lines are neither optimistic or pessimistic, demonstrating that the victims of the Holocaust were emotionally drained to the point where they only felt hunger. Fear itself lost its meaning in the camp, as they were constantly living in the shadow of the crematory smoke stacks. Death became the only staples in their lives, “I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He’s only one who’s kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people,” (77). In this phrase, the reader realizes that the camps destroyed victim 's emotions to the point where they only relied on death and destruction. Wiesel’s dialogue on faith and humanity portrays the mentality of the victims of the Holocaust, “Where is God now? … Where is he? Here he is - He is hanging here on this gallows…” (62). Many stories from the Holocaust depict stories of victims maintaining their faith throughout their time in the camps. However, Wiesel depicts a much more relatable image through his dialogue; an image of destruction in emotional, spiritual, and physical
In human history, the most famous prison camp is the Auschwitz concentration camp where millions of human beings spent the last of their days. The most notorious group from Auschwitz being the Jews who lost the greatest number of its people and also the most remembered from the concentration camp. A prison camp is defined as “a camp for the confinement of war or political prisoners” (“Prison camps,” Dictionary.com). Prison camps found in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPNK) have been found to treat its prisoners little more than beasts. The atrocities done in North Korea are unknown but the severity of the camps have left great scars on the people of North Korea. If left unknown, the prison camps in North Korea can mirror Auschwitz’s mass genocide on millions of people.
The Germans had tortured Elie Wiesel in the story “Night” during the holocaust because of his religion. He believes that the people who were indifferent and were just an observer caused the Germans to torture him. He thinks if people who were observers, st...
One of the biggest questions of the Holocaust is how something so terrible could be allowed to happen. How could anyone accept the genocide of an entire religious group and turn their heads to people who are suffering? The fact that the Holocaust was allowed to happen caused many people to question their faith in a God. Elie Wiesel’s memoir “Night” depicts an insightful image on how the Holocaust was so damaging to people’s faith. The traumatic and unbearable events that happened during the Holocaust caused countless people to be destroyed emotionally and physically, but some returned from the Holocaust stronger due to perseverance, hope and resilience .
The Holocaust was the execution of 11 million Jews, during the span of 1933 - 1945. Elie Wiesel’s dreadful experience, has provoked him to wright Night, a memoir to his involvement with the Auschwitz concentration camp. Elie Wiesel was sent to Auschwitz, where Nazi’s beat him, and where he and his family was forced to endure labor. Elie’s traumatizing experience with the Holocaust, has altered his relationship with God, and his view on torture.
Chinese labor camps were created in the 1950s by the Kuomintang as a way to get free labor out of Chinese civilians. When civilians were sent to prison, some would stay in prison and others would go to the labor camps. Prisoners were sent to the labor camps as a way to become reformed through a system they called, “re-education through labor.” In the 1950s, prisoners were sent to Chinese labor camps in order to get a “re-education through labor” and hopefully, come out of the system as better and more productive members of society; but after learning about the Laogai system more in depth, they have not become better and more productive members of society. There were approximately 350 Chinese labor camps . The Kuomintang would sentence Chinese civilians who had committed minor offenses and could be reformed to become a better person for the society. The camps that the prisoners had to live in were very unsanitary. Diseases spread like wildfire and their diets were horrendous. Although no one had spoken up and tried to stop the labor camps, the Laogai system violated The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
When looking at the holocaust, it is widely known the devastation and pain that was caused by the Nazis; however when inspecting the holocaust on a deeper level, it is evident that the Jews were exposed to unimaginable treatment and experimentation often overlooked in history discussions. When looking at “Night”, Elie Wiesel was helped by the doctors in the camp when his foot was severely infected; although this is not the experience he had, many Jews were mistreated and even killed by the doctors. Many Nazi doctors that were assigned to Jewish patients were later found to have exposed the patients to horrific medical experiments and unnecessary treatments that commonly led to their death.