Some say difficult times can either strengthen or destroy a relationship. The Holocaust is a prime example of a difficult time that tests one's relationships. About six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and about one million Jewish prisoners died in Auschwitz, the largest concentration camp of the Holocaust. During this horrific time, families were torn apart by the Nazi regime. Relationships were tested to the breaking point as the Nazis attempted to destroy what was left of the prisoners emotions. Most prisoners lose all faith in God and give up. In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel, renowned author and Nobel Peace Prize award winner, recounts these horrific events, sharing his story of survival. As Wiesel’s faith diminishes, his relationship with his father becomes even more essential to his survival. Years before being deported to Auschwitz, twelve-year-old Elie Wiesel is an incredibly religious boy. Even at his young age, Wiesel aspires to study the …show more content…
Wiesel is separated from Mr. Wiesel at work. He pleads to the foreman, Franek, ¨Please. . . I would have liked to be by my father¨ (Wiesel 48). Wiesel refuses to be away from his father's side for even a few hours. Clearly, Wiesel's relationship with his father has improved, yet his faith continues to diminish. One day, Wiesel and the prisoners are forced to watch the hanging of two other prisoners and the angel-faced pipel, who is much smaller than the others; he struggles against the rope, dying incredibly slowly. Wiesel hears a man behind him ask where God is, to which he thinks, ¨Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows¨ (Wiesel 62). He considers God to be dead like the pipel struggling against his gallows. God will not leave Wiesel, but he seems to be dying slowly but surely. Wiesel's faith continues to die out; thankfully, he still has his father to cling to as their bond continues to
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
Most people have never experienced anything near as awful as what Wiesel experienced. He was one of the only people who found a way to hold onto their faith. Many made excuses not to perform rituals and eventually lost all faith. Wiesel was weakened, but remained faithful. Akiba Drumer, a friend of Wiesel, tried to convince himself that it was a test by God. However, Akiba also lost faith. “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.” (Wiesel 34) This quote was from a small portion of Wiesel’s “Never Shall I Forget Poem.” It showed how Elie lost faith in God when he saw what the Nazis were doing to families and children. This quote shows how the religious part of Elie was “murdered.” Elie seemed to become foreign and isolated from his people. He seemed to be just going through the motions during his time in the camps. “In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.” (Mauriac XXI) This quote shows how Wiesel felt like he was a stranger to the religion, community, and faith. Elie Wiesel couldn’t understand why God would hurt people, and most of all why he was spared. “And question of questions: Where was God in all this? It seemed as impossible to conceive of Auschwitz with God as to conceive of Auschwitz without God.” (Hope, Despair and Memory) This shows how Wiesel couldn’t grasp the reasoning behind God. He wanted
In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel remembers his time at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Elie begins to lose his faith in God after his faith is tested many times while at the concentration camp. Elie conveys to us how horrific events have changed the way he looks at his faith and God. Through comments such as, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, my soul, and turned my dreams into dust,” he reveals the toll that the Holocaust has taken on him. The novel begins during the years of 1942-1944 in Sighet, Transylvannia, Romania. Elie Wiesel and his family are deported and Elie is forced to live through many horrific events. Several events such as deportation, seeing dead bodies while at Auschwitz, and separation from his mother and sisters, make Elie start to question his absolute faith in God.
It is almost unimaginable the difficulties victims of the holocaust faced in concentration camps. For starters they were abducted from their homes and shipped to concentration camps in tightly packed cattle cars. Once they made it to a camp, a selection process occurred. The males were separated from the females. Then those who were too young or too old to work were sent to the showers. Once the showers were tightly packed, the Nazi’s would turn on the water and drop in canisters of chemicals that would react with the water and release a deadly gas. Within minutes, everyone in the shower would be dead. The bodies would be hauled out and burned. Those who were not selected to die didn’t fair much better. Terrible living conditions, forced labor, malnourishment, and physical abuse were just a few of the things they had to endure. It was such a dark time. So many invaluable lessons can be learned from the holocaust and from those who survived it. One theme present in Elie Wiesel’s novel Night and Robert Benigni’s film Life is Beautiful is that family can strengthen or hinder one during adversity.
Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy, lives in Sighet during World War II with his mother, father, and two sisters, and he is very religious and wanted to study Judaism. However, there were warnings by some people that Jewish people were being deported and killed. Although no one believes these warnings, Elie and his family are taken to a ghetto where they have no food. After being in the ghetto Elie and his father are separated from Elie’s mother and sister because of selection and were placed in cattle cars where they had no room. They are taken to Auschwitz where they suffer from hunger, beatings, and humiliation from the guards which causes Elie’s father to become weak. By now Elie loses his faith in God because of all he has been through. Lastly, Elie’s father dies just before the Jews are liberated and Elie sees his reflection in the mirror but does not recognize himself because he looks like a skeleton.
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.
Authors sometimes refer to their past experiences to help cope with the exposure to these traumatic events. In his novel Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the devastating and horrendous events of the Holocaust, one of the world’s highest points for man’s inhumanity towards man, brutality, and cruel treatment, specifically towards the Jewish Religion. His account takes place from 1944-1945 in Germany while beginning at the height of the Holocaust and ending with the last years of World War II. The reader will discover through this novel that cruelty is exemplified all throughout Wiesel's, along with the other nine million Jews’, experiences in the inhumane concentration camps that are sometimes referred to as “death factories.”
Eliezer Wiesel loses his faith in god, family and humanity through the experiences he has from the Nazi concentration camp.
“When I was young, I lost everything.” This is a quote from a Holocaust survivor. Elie Wiesel truly did lose everything, except his father. Yes is father did die but, he never lost the bond that had grown, though not many could say the same. A boy named Meir and his father lost this bond and much more. This causes a great difference between the two relationships. The relationship of Elie and his father and Meir and his father differ because Meir and his father have lost their father/son but, they also are similar because of the situations that have experienced and the things that they have been through.
My claim is that the father and son relationship of Elie and his father had a huge impact on his life. The way Elie thinks and the things he does for his father. His relationship takes him to extreme measures supporting him like he is the number one person to live. Elie was a good kid but when it had come to his father everything went up and down for him. So his relationship with his father wasn’t a good one and it was only leading to disaster.
Wiesel appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos in Night. The reader’s logic is not so much directly appealed to, but indirectly the description of the events causes the reader to...
“My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breath, out of strength, desperate. I had no right to let myself die. What would he do without me? I was his sole support.” This quote from the book night represents the father son relationship in the book written by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel was a famous writer and a Holocaust survivor. He wrote many nonfiction books, and night being one of his most successful. Through this book, Elie Wiesel indicated that when night came bad things happened. Elie, a young Jewish boy, and his family were forced into small ghettos by Nazis during World War II. Elie and his family later departed to the unknown were the Nazis sent them to a concentration camp in Auschwitz.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish
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.
Throughout Night, the bond that Eliezer has with his father Chlomo passes through a rocky course, but eventually becomes stronger due to the isolation and ultimately the death of Chlomo. This rocky course has events that that go from being inseparable in Birkenau, to feeling as though he is a burden. In between, there are times where Elizer’s relationship is clearly falling apart and then being fixed. The camps greatly influence the father-son relationship that Elie and Chlomo have, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for worse. Originally in 1941 when the Wiesel family was living in Sighet, Eliezer took Chlomo for granted, as any child would. Little did he know that their relationship would permanently change forever.