11,000,000, this is the number of individual souls wasted for the regime of Adolf Hitler. Eliezer Wiesel, author of Night, devoted Jew, and survivor of Auschwitz in the year 1944, beared witness to this horrific event known as The Holocaust. Elie went on to write this exceptional novel that depicts the events involved in the Holocaust through the eyes of a fiteen year old boy. This being said, the purpose of Eliezer writing this book is not to create a story to be read, ranked, and forgotten. The purpose of Night is to inspire the reader to not be silent when bearing witness to injustice just as the world did during the genocide of Rwanda. Through Elie’s use of the themes; dehumanization and injustice, he convinces the reader not to be silent when injustices occur.
A major theme within the book Night is dehumanization, the physiological process of stripping an individual of their humanity consequently making them less than another individual. Dehumanization was the Nazi’s most powerful asset during The Holocaust in their goal to
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eliminate all Jews. It starts back in his home town when the nazis come and start to control the Jewish population by restricting them in daily activities such as implementing curfews, going to synagogue and practicing their religion at all. Next, the Nazis put the Jews into a ghetto much like sheep being herded into a pen . Following the Ghettos came the biggest step of dehumanizing the Jews which was the train ride to Auschwitz. On this ride the conditions were equivalent or worse than the conditions of cattle. “Lying down was out of the question, and we were only able to sit by deciding to take turns. There was very little air.”(Wiesel, 32) Therefore, by treating the Jews like animals, it stripped them of their humanity, which resulted in the convincing of themselves that they were less than all other humans. Along with this dehumanization came consequences in the form of injustice. For example, on the train ride to Auschwitz, in the same cart as Elie, was a woman named Madame Schächter. About halfway through the trip she broke down and started to constantly scream “fire, fire, I can see fire.” The other people in the cart at first just tried to ignore her but after a week they couldn’t stand it any longer. So some of the men began to beat her right in front of her own son. Because they had been dehumanized, the son of Madam Schächter and all of the other inmates just stayed silent as they witnessed this injustice. Nobody chose to do the right thing, to not be silent, to stop the men beating her and convince them to bear the agonizing screams because it wasn’t worth their humanity. Elie’s goal of writing Night to encourage his reader not be silent applies to many aspects of daily living right here in our community.
A common example of this would be bullying. Although not very common at ECHHS, it still has a huge presence in everyday life in other places around the globe. For instance, when the average person walks by a scene of someone getting bullied, that bystander either turns a blind eye or assumes that they can’t do anything about it. And that's precisely what the world did when they noticed the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust. To return to the subject, the purpose of Elie’s book is to inspire the reader who walks by the scene of someone getting bullied to say something, to do something, to make a difference. Whether it be to call for help, to go in themselves and break it up, or to just raise awareness about that situation. All of these options will help the victim and subsequently, fulfil Elie’s
goal. Throughout the course of Night, occurred many instances dehumanization because of the awful conditions that the Jewish people were subjected to. This dehumanization led to acts of injustices executed by the Jews themselves. In the other hand, acts of injustice are not restricted to events with such gravity like The Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. They are also frequently found in everyday life and it is our job to stand up to these injustices because it makes a difference for the victim. To conclude, Night by Elie Wiesel, is a unique novel that is not just an incredible story of survival but also his tool. Elie wields this tool to inspire the reader through the use of the themes dehumanization and injustice to not be silent when acts of injustice occur.
In the book Night the character Eliezer faces many challenges and sees many things. But the most prominent feature of all the death camps that Eliezer is in was Dehumanization.Dehumanization is what the S.S. used to keep the jews in line in the concentration camps while they were in a animal like state where it’s every man for himself.Therefore this proves that dehumanization is a process that was used by the SS to keep the Jews in check by using the crematorium,beatings,and executions to make the Jews less human.
The book, Night, by Eliezer (Elie) Wiesel, entails the story of his childhood in Nazi concentration camps all around Europe. Around the middle of the 20th century in the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army traveled around Europe in an effort to exterminate the Jewish population. As they went to through different countries in order to enforce this policy, Nazi officers sent every Jewish person they found to a concentration camp. Often called death camps, the main purpose was to dispose of people through intense work hours and terrible living conditions. Wiesel writes about his journey from a normal, happy life to a horrifying environment surrounded by death in the Nazi concentration camps. Night is an amazingly
One might treat others like beast, but is the treated consider human? The novel Night is an autobiography written by Elie Wiesel. He explains the dehumanization process of his family, Elizer, and his fellow Jews throughout WWII. Throughout the novel the Jews changes from civilized humans to vicious beings that have behavior that resembles animal. The process of dehumanization begins after the arrestation of the Jew community leaders. The process continues through the bad treatment given by the Nazi to the Jews, in the concentration camps. Finally the Jews are dehumanized to the point where they begins to go against each other; so that they could have a higher chance of survival, at the end where the Jew were forced to move from camp to camp.
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.
Throughout the Holocaust, the Jews were continuously dehumanized by the Nazis. However, these actions may not have only impacted the Jews, but they may have had the unintended effect of dehumanizing the Nazis as well. What does this say about humanity? Elie Wiesel and Art Spiegelman both acknowledge this commentary in their books, Night and Maus. The authors demonstrate that true dehumanization reveals that the nature of humanity is not quite as structured as one might think.
Night by Elie Wiesel was a memoir on one of the worst things to happen in human history, the Holocaust. A terrible time where the Nazi German empire started to take control of eastern Europe during WWII. This book tells of the terrible things that happened to the many Jewish people of that time. This time could easily change grown men, and just as easily a boy of 13. Elie’s relationship with God and his father have been changed forever thanks to the many atrocities committed at that time.
The author of the book Night , Elie Wiesel, explains his life, as well as his fellow Jews, as a young Jewish boy in concentration camps. The Jews who were sent to concentration camps were put under extremely harsh conditions and were treated like nothing but animals while under the control of the Germans. Wiesel illustrates a picture of these horrific events in his book NIght. He also describes the gruesome conditions the Jews were forced through while under the power of the Germans.
Night by Elie Wiesel displays the effect of how Nazis took away the Jews’ basic rights
During the Holocaust era, a third of all Jewish people alive at the time were murdered by the Germans. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the systematic killing of the Jewish people was happening all around him. Although Wiesel does not use the word “genocide,” his account of his experience shows that it was definitely genocide that he witnessed.
11 million people were killed during the Holocaust, 6 million of which were Jews. Night is Elie Wiesel’s autobiography that takes place during the Holocaust. In his book, Elie quickly loses faith in every aspect of his life during his harsh journey. He begins to lose all faith in himself, in mankind, and in God.
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
callous to the death of their peers, and going so far as to murder fellow
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.
The Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. 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 his faith and his 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? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
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.