Elie Wiesel Cruelty

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, started off as an ordinary teenager, however, went on to face cruelty that no one should have to experience. He had friends, went to school, and even studied the Kabbalah in his free time. Until one day, his hometown, Sighet, was invaded by German soldiers. After the arrival of German soldiers, Jews like Wiesel were sent to the ghettos, and they were then put on trains to a variety of different concentration camps. Wiesel constantly went back and forth through numerous concentration camps— five to be exact. After being separated from his mother and sister, the only person Wiesel had left was his father. Wiesel expresses the feeling as, "My father's presence was the only thing that stopped me. He was running next to me, out of breath, out of strength, desperate.

I had no right to let myself die.

What would he do without me? I was his sole support” (Wiesel 86-87). While going through these concentration camps, Wiesel and his father had been exposed to the atrocities of the Holocaust: beatings, running miles upon miles, and even watching the hangings of young children. Unfortunately, Wiesel was one to experience a beating, right in front of his own eyes. The victim, Wiesel’s father, was beat in front of him while Wiesel watched it all occur without moving an inch or making a sound (Wiesel 54). In order to become the man he later was, this was one of the adversities that Wiesel had to persevere through. During the run to Gleiwitz, a concentration camp, Wiesel witnesses one of the prisoners give up in a rather indelible way. As Wiesel is running, a prisoner, Zalman, surrenders and falls to the ground. Wiesel viewed this and gives a detailed account of this moment in his memoir— “‘I can’t go on’, he groaned. He lowered his pants and fell to the ground. That is the image I have of him. My foot was aching, I shivered with every step… Death eloped

me. It suffocated me. It stuck to me like glue. I felt like I could touch it. The idea of dying, of ceasing to me, began to fascinate me” (Wiesel 86). Zalman was subsequently most likely trampled to death which increased Wiesel’s urge to cave in himself. Wiesel watched countless people give up yet persists by mentally battling the will to surrender. This was yet another adversity Wiesel encountered during the years in which he was in the concentration camps. Despite this, Wiesel pushed through all the atrocities until the last camp he was in, Buchenwald, was liberated by American tanks. After the liberation of Buchenwald, Wiesel lived on to have a family of his own and become an author, giving the world his account of the true horrors of the Holocaust.