The Holocaust: A Nightmare Through The Eyes Of a Survivor

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In the 1940’s, something as horrifying as the Holocaust was unimaginable, unheard of, and un-noticed. How could someone believe that humans could kill other humans for no reason; that they would be tortured, worked until their death, or burned alive? It was unthinkable. How does someone explain that terrible event so that history doesn’t repeat itself? To believe this story, it takes more than a simple statement. It takes more than someone saying it happened for the message to be grasped. To fully understand the gravity of something like the Holocaust the reader has to be transported to the concentration camps. They have to feel the pain, the suffering that it took to survive, and the absolute fear. Only then can the human race prevent another Holocaust from happening. Elie Wiesel does this by choosing powerful words while capturing the reader’s attention with symbolism and fierce, wild imagery that instantly transports the reader to an unimaginable, unheard of, and un-noticed place.
Throughout the book, Wiesel uses his diction by referring to the concentration camps as just a fantasy or nightmare. By doing this, it shows how unreal and unbelievable the whole situation was just by choosing these specific words to describe the camps. The reader gets a sense of how implausible and astonishing the Holocaust was. Wiesel explains how he doesn’t even want to believe it’s real when he writes, “Surely it was a dream,” (37), and “A nightmare, perhaps,” (33). He doesn’t understand how someone could do this to an entire race for no reason, so he deems it merely a nightmare, a dream that he will snap out of. The overwhelming message here is that it isn’t a just a dream, it did happen and how unbelievable that notion is. Wiesel continues this ...

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...s his message because it shows how it looked, smelled, and sounded throughout the novel and made it seem as though the reader was a part of the Holocaust.
Elie Wiesel didn’t just tell his story, he brought everyone who read it into his experience and made them feel the terror and dread that he felt. To explain this story is to explain a nightmare, an unimaginable tale of innocent people dying for no reason. Wiesel used his experience to send a message to humans everywhere that this cannot be overlooked, that the Holocaust did happen, and that everyone needs to try and prevent it from happening again. He does this through heartbreaking imagery and diction while symbolizing what the Holocaust was for him using the word “night”. By doing this, the reader is transported to the Holocaust and taken on a dark, terrifying, and eye-opening experience they won’t soon forget.

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