The phrase “Arbeit macht Frei” is formed in iron above the gates to many concentration camps including the camp of Auschwitz in Poland, where Elie Wiesel was held by the Nazis during the Holocaust. While this statement is often met with cynicism, there was an ironic truth to this phrase to those who shared in Wiesel’s position. The most straightforward example of the ironism of this statement was the hard labor they did within the camps at the direction of the guards that ultimately led to them escaping selection. Alternatively, there are less direct interpretations of this expression such as extreme exertion freeing the mind from feeling pain or thinking about the horrible conditions and working to preserve someone's life only to be free from the role of caretaker. In the end, the truth of the saying “Arbeit macht Frei” rings true throughout Elie Wiesel’s Night and can be interpreted as an underlying theme to his book.
When considering the phrase that had been displayed above the countless concentration camps during World War II, the foremost interpretation of it has always been that working for the Nazis would keep them from killing you out right. In Wiesel’s Night this very interpretation is used to explain the tremendous amount of labor that the Jews did at the Nazis command and why they withstood countless hours of this hard labor. For this reason, when Jews were chosen during the selection for transfer to the crematory, they begged to be spared by insisting that they could still work. This very situation was expressed in chapter five when the prisoners who had been promised to be saved found out that they were, in reality, still going to be killed: “Save us! You promised...We want to go to the depot. We are strong enough to...
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...d to his desire and acquisition of freedom from the need to care for him.
To conclude, the interpretation of the statement “Arbeit macht Frei” has many meanings, both direct and indirect. Obviously there is the most straightforward interpretation that labor freed you from the crematory selection but there are more significant indirect interpretations as well. From these implied explanation the meaning one gets is that hard physical stress allows a person’s mind to wander, essentially freeing them from reality both physically and mentally. It also provides an explanation to Wiesel’s struggle to abandon and be free from his father. Ultimately, “Arbeit macht Frei” is validated throughout Night and is can be seen as a theme overall.
Works Cited
Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982. Print.
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
Wiesel uses the motif fear to develop characters. He uses this motif to show how the other Jews in the camp felt. Elie’s father tells him that he cannot sleep, since sleep means death. “Don’t let yourself be overcome by sleep, Eliezer. It’s dangerous to fall asleep in snow.
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...
“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
“How old he had grown since the night before! His body was completely twisted, shriveled up into itself. His eyes were petrified, his lips withered, decayed.”(Wiesel 79) Chlomo -Wiesel’s father -changed emotionally and physically. He was put through incredible labor along with other prisoners and started to forget why it was important to survive. “‘I can’t go on.… This is the end…. I’m going to die here….’”(Wiesel
" N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2008. . Wiesel, Elie. Night.
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lived changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4). This would change in the coming weeks, as Jews are segregated, sent to camps, and both physically and emotionally abused. These changes and abuse would dehumanize men and cause them to revert to basic instincts. Wiesel and his peers devolve from civilized human beings to savage animals during the course of Night.
Inked on the pages of Elie Wiesel’s Night is the recounting of him, a young Jewish boy, living through the mass genocide that was the Holocaust. The words written so eloquently are full of raw emotions depict his journey from a simple Jewish boy to a man who was forced to see the horrors of the world. Within this time period, between beatings and deaths, Wiesel finds himself questioning his all loving and powerful God. If his God loved His people, then why would He allow such a terrible thing to happen? Perhaps Wiesel felt abandoned by his God, helpless against the will of the Nazis as they took everything from him.
... it. Obviously, he has given up on his father. Wiesel feels a sense of freedom once his father died. He identifies, “I might perhaps have found something like-free at last!” (Wiesel 106). No more having to care for two people; he can finally just worry about himself.
This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses faith and relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he, in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death?
In his book Night Mr. Elie Wiesel shares his experiences about the camps and how cruel all of the Jews were treated in that period. In fact, he describes how he was beaten and neglected by the SS officers in countless occasions. There are very few instances where decent humans are tossed into certain conditions where they are treated unfairly, and cruel. Mr. Wiesel was a victim of the situation many times while he was in the camps. Yet he did not act out, becoming a brute himself, while others were constantly being transformed into brutes themselves. Mr. Wiesel was beaten so dreadfully horrible, however, for his safety, he decided to not do anything about it. There were many more positions where Mr. Wiesel was abused, malnourished, and easily could have abandoned his father but did not.
In the final moments of Night, Elie has been broken down to only the most basic ideas of humanity; survival in it of itself has become the only thing left for him to cling to. After the chain of unfortunate events that led to his newfound solitude after his father’s abrupt death, Elie “thought only to eat. [He] thought not of [his] father, or [his] mother” (113). He was consumed with the ideas of survival, so he repeatedly only expressed his ideas of gluttony rather than taking the time to consider what happened to his family. The stress of survival allocated all of Elie’s energy to that cause alone. Other humanistic feelings like remorse, love, and faith were outcast when they seemed completely unimportant to his now sole goal of survival. The fading of his emotions was not sudden mishap though; he had been worn away with time. Faith was one of the most prominent key elements in Elie’s will to continue, but it faded through constant. During the hanging of a young boy Elie heard a man call to the crowd pleading, “Where is merciful God, where is He?” (64). It snapped Elie’s resolve. From this point on, he brought up and questioned his faith on a regular basis. Afterwards, most other traits disappeared like steam after a fire is extinguished. Alone in the wet embers the will to survive kept burning throughout the heart ache. When all else is lost, humans try to survive for no reason other than to survive, and Wiesel did survive. He survived with mental scars that persisted the ten long years of his silence. Even now after his suffering has, Elie continues to constantly repeat the word never throughout his writing. To write his memoir he was forced to reopen the lacerations the strains of survival left inside his brain. He strongly proclaims, “Never shall I forget that night...Never shall I forget the smoke...Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the
A fifteen-year old boy, Elie Wiesel, and his family are overwhelmed by the thought of uncertainty when they are forced out of their home; as a result, the family would be forced into a cattle car and shipped to Auschwitz. At first, the Jews have a very optimistic outlook while in
“He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart.” This evokes sadness and pity from the author over a young boy having no joy in him. Elie Wiesel uses this technique to get human feelings of attachment to form with his speech.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. Vol. 1. New York City: Hill and Wang, 2006. 33-86. 1 vols. Print.