Night by Elie Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom

The chaos and destruction that the Nazi’s are causing are not changing the lives of only Jews, but also the lives of citizens in other countries. Between Night by Elie Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are crucial to the survival of principle characters. Ironically, in both stories there is a foreseen future, that both seemed to be ignored.

Before the Great War begins affecting the Wiesel’s and ten Boom’s lives, both families experience a premonition of a dark future ahead of them. Ironically, neither family chooses to listen to these signs. In the novel Night, there are two events of visions. One is a character named Moshe the Beadle. He is a premonition for the town of Sighet in which Elie and his family are living in. Moshe is a sign because he survived and came back to tell his story and warn the people of the dangers they were about to face. Moshe reaches the town and yells, “I warned you.’ And left without waiting for a response” (10) His story speaks about his experience as a prisoner on the train:

The Jews were ordered to get off and onto waiting trucks. There everyone was ordered to get out. They were forced to dig huge trenches. Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and off their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns (Wiesel 10).

Unfortunately, Moshe’s stories went through on ear and out of the other for those who even listened. He went from one Jewish house to the next telling about his experience, “people not only refused to believe, his tales, they refused to listen. Others flatly said that he had gone mad” (7). Also in Night, Madame Sch...

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..., which made him more upset because it was his own father. Also, he speaks about reaching down into his inner conscious to find out why he really was not as upset and he would have been if it were the first week in the camp. Elie believes that if he reached into his thoughts he would have come up with something like: “Free at last!...”(112).

Between Night and The Hiding Place, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are clearly proved to be essential in order to survive in these death camps. Corrie, Elie, and other victims of these harsh brutalities who did survive had a rare quality that six million others unfortunately did not.

Works Cited

Boom, Corrie, John L. Sherrill, and Elizabeth Sherrill. The Hiding Place, . Washington Depot, Conn.: Chosen Books; [distributed by Revell, 1971. Print.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York Bantam Books, 1960.