Cruelty In Elie Wiesel's Night

When hard times come upon you, will you step up to help others in need or will you do anything you can to make sure that you survive? In night Elie is faced with many events and decisions that change him throughout the story. He learns how people including himself act different under the conditions of the Holocaust. These events show that during these hard times people are known to display forms of extreme cruelty or kindness.

In Night many hard times come upon people which can lead people to show acts of cruelty in order for their own survival. Like when Rabbi’s son abandons him “in order to get rid of the burden” (67). He didn't care for him anymore and thought that he was only being held back from surviving, so he left his father to die. In times like the Holocaust many things that we take for granted become important like food and water. German officers Woolf throw food into the train with the Jewish people inside and watch them fight for it. As a result, an old man was trying to hide the piece of bread when his sons “shadow threw itself upon him” (74)

attacked him and killed him for the bread and later another man came and killed him for a single piece of bread. In the movie The Pianist there are many times when the Germans are extremely cruel. For instance, when the Jews were walking in a line and the officer told some of the Jews to step out of line and then he shot them one by one. The Germans abuse their power and treat Jews way more cruel than necessary.
Throughout the story people show a great deal of kindness towards and can be completely selfless.

When Elie arrived at the concentration camp he was scared and didn’t know his way around yet. The French girl shows kindness when she comforts Elie, he “felt a cool hand wiping the blood from [his] forehead” (53) after he was beaten by Idek. One prisoner helped Elie and his father a great deal when he told them to say that they were ages “ eighteen and forty” (22). If it was not for him Elie and his father could have been killed since their actual ages could be considered too young or to old to work. In the movie The Pianist one of the German officers goes out of his way to help Szpilman by giving him food and his coat. The German officers are known to the Jews as the people that ruined their lives. So, it is not often that you would find one who would risk his own safety to help out a

Jew.
In our world today events bringing out cruelty or kindness in people is happening a lot, including, the Boston Marathon. This was no doubt a horrible tragedy and many people came through to help in any way that they could. People opened up homes for those who were in need of a place to stay, organizations and groups were also made to raise money and help support people who were injured or unstable from the bombings. However, during these times many people took advantage of what was going on, they stole money from the people that were in desperate need by claiming they got injured by the bombings. In one occasion, a woman, who was in the Boston Marathon claimed that she had injuries including traumatic brain injury, hearing loss, vision loss and post-traumatic stress disorder. The women gained around $38,000 for her false injuries. She took advantage and showed true selfishness which showed no respect for the victims that got severely injured or even the ones who lost their lives that day.
Overall, people in tragedies that continue to happen around the world bring out people’s true self by either doing anything they can to make things right or either showing that they could only care about themselves. The main reason why people could act cruelly is mainly because they only care that the benefit it is gonna give them and will step on anyone to survive. People act kindly because they want everyone to survive, they show that they can be truly selfless.