Birds of the Same Feather Don’t Always Fly Together “When I was young, I lost everything.” This is a quote from a Holocaust survivor. Elie Wiesel truly did lose everything, except his father. Yes is father did die but, he never lost the bond that had grown, though not many could say the same. A boy named Meir and his father lost this bond and much more. This causes a great difference between the two relationships. The relationship of Elie and his father and Meir and his father differ because Meir and his father have lost their father/son but, they also are similar because of the situations that have experienced and the things that they have been through. Elie Wiesel was born September 30, 1928 in Transylvania. He grew up in a small Jewish …show more content…
Elie Wiesel wrote in his book Night, “ We stayed in Gleiwitz for three days. Three days without food or drink” (1256). In Gleiwitz both families were just about refused their basic rights as human beings. The Nazi soldiers were cruel to the captives. The prisoners had already endured tough and cruel treatment from the other camp they were imprisoned in now they were stuck in a new place with even worse treatment. They were forced to listen to the gunshots of the friends and family being killed. “We were given no food. We lived on snow; it took the place of bread” When Elie and the other prisoners were transported by the SS soldiers, they were given nothing to support themselves for the long journey to Germany. The prisoners ended up eating the snow that had fallen onto their blankets. They were forced to be separated and into kill and transport groups. On the journey there, they had to throw out the dead, sometime they knew the people who were being thrown out sometimes they didn’t but, it was still something terrible to have to do. To make matters worse, the ‘natives’ were throwing bread into the carts just to watch the captives fight for bread. “The passengers were amusing themselves by throwing coins to the “natives”... Soon nearly everywhere, pieces of bread were being dropped into the skeletons of men, fighting one another to death for a mouthful”(1259).
Elie and his family were sent a to concentration camp. There, in a camp called Auschwitz, Elie is separated from his mother and younger sister, but still remains with his father. Gerda was sent to the camps with no one but herself because she was separated from her family. All Gerda had to worry about was herself. While Elie always had to look after his father, which at times he felt as his father was a burden to
Elie wiesel born sep 30 1928 in sighet , Transylvania. Elie wiesel overcame many things in his life . But one of the things are fear that he will die also there was starvation that took place and that is the most terriblest thing that can happen. Also there was death of the many jews and his mother and sisters. These adversities made Wiesel become the man he is today; he is truly a humanitarian.
In Sighet, Transylvania in Romania Elie Wiesel was born to his parents Sarah Feig and Shlomo Wiesel on September 30, 1928. In Sighet, his family lived in a close-knit Jewish community where his father ran a grocery business. Wiesel along with his three sisters were raised in the Hasidic sect of Judaism, which his mother’s family belonged to. Since he was the only son he was well educated in the Talmud, which are a collection of Jewish laws. Although Wiesel was fascinated with Hassidic traditions, his father wanted him to concentrate on his s...
Wiesel suggests that,“Toward five o’clock in the morning, we were driven out of the barracks. The Kapos beat us once more, but I ceased to feel any pain from their blows.” (27) This quote reveals that the officers did not care what time of day it was if they felt like punishing the prisoners they did. Elie was at the wrong place at the wrong time and saw something he wasn’t supposed to see and was punished. “A-7713! I came forward. A box! He ordered. They brought him a box. Lie down on it! On your stomach! I obeyed. Then I was aware of nothing but the strokes of the whip” (Wiesel 42). This quote shows the cruel punishment that Elie and other Jews endured in the Holocaust. The Nazi’s were cruel and inhumane to the Jews when it came to feeding them and clothing them during the cold winters. “Mountains of prison clothes. On we ran. As we passed, trousers, tunic, shirt, and socks were thrown at us”( Wiesel 27) “ Such outfits! Meir Katz, a giant, had a child’s trousers, and Stern, a think little chap, a tunic which completely swamped him” (Wiesel 27) This quote shows that the Nazi’s did not care if they got the right size shirt or pants or not they passed them out and you got what you
Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928. Elie is a writer, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and surviver of the Holocaust. He is the author of over 40 books, the best known of which is Night. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankin”. Elie was born in Sighet, a small town in Romania, to his father Shlomo and Mother Sarah Wiesel. Elie Wiesel had three sisters: Hilda and Bea, who were older than he, and Tzipora, who was the youngest in the family. On May 16, 1944, the Hungarian authorities deported the Jewish community, including Elie and his family, in Sighet to Auschwitz – Birkenau. Auschwitz was the first camp Elie was sent to. On January 28, 1945, just a few weeks after the two were marched to Buchenwald and only months before the camp was liberated by the American Army on April 11. Sadly Wiesel's father suffered from dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion, and was later sent to the crematoria. The last word his father spoke was “Eliezer”, Elie's name. After the war, Elie was placed in a French orphanage, where he learned the French language and was soon reunited with his two older sisters, Hilda and Bea (Tzipora was murdered at the camps), who had also survived the war. In 1948, Elie began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. Elie also taught hebrew, and was a choir master before going on to becoming a Journalist, for Israli and French newspapers.
Born on December 31, 1908, Simon Wiesenthal lived in Buczacz, Germany which is now known as the Lvov Oblast section of the Ukraine. The Nazi Hunter came from a small Jewish family who suffered horrifically during the Holocaust (The Simon Wiesenthal Center). Wiesenthal spent a great amount of time trying to survive in the harsh conditions while in internment camps and after escaping the last camp he attended. Wiesenthal spent weeks traveling through the wilderness until he was eventually captured by the Allies, still wondering the entire time if his wife was even alive (The Simon Wiesenthal Center). Of the 3000 prisoners in the camp Wiesenthal escaped from, only 1200 survived and Wiesenthal was one of them (Holocaust Research Project).
Upon entering the concentration camps, Eliezer and his father demonstrate a normal father and son relationship. In a normal father son relation, the father protects and gives advice to the son, and the son is dependent and reliant on the father. Eliezer and his father demonstrate this relationship to extremes throughout the beginning of their time in the camp. Eliezer reveals his childlike dependency upon entering the camp. Eliezer displays this dependency during first selection by stating, “The baton pointed to the left. I first wanted to see where they would send my father. Were he to have gone to the right, I would have run after him (Night 26-32) ” . Eliezer’s determination to stay with his father was constantly present. Eliezer reflects on a time in the camp which is all that he could think about was not to lose his father in the camp. Eliezer also requires his father’s protection during their stay in the concentration camps. Unintentionally demanding this protection, Eliezer remembers, “I kept walking, my father holding my hand” (Night 29). Eliezer continues to show his need for his father’s presence. Eliezer’s actions and thoughts reflect his
Dehumanization Through Elie Wiesel 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.
Food is essential to basic life. It provides people with the energy to think, speak, walk, talk, and breathe. In preparation for the Jews deportation from the ghettos of Transylvania, “the (Jewish) women were busy cooking eggs, roasting meat, and baking cakes”(Wiesel, 13). The Jewish families realized how crucial food was to their lives even before they were faced with the daily condition of famine and death in the concentration camps. The need for food was increased dramatically with the introduction of the famine-like conditions of the camps. Wiesel admitted that, although he was incredibly hungry, he had refused to eat the plate of thick soup they served to the prisoners on the first day of camp because of his nature of being a “spoiled child”. But his attitude changed rapidly as he began to realize that his life span was going to be cut short if he continued to refuse to eat the food they served him. “By the third day, I (Elie Wiesel) was eating any kind of soup hungrily” (Wiesel, 40). His desire to live superseded his social characteristic of being “pampered”. Remarque also uses his characters to show to how a balanced diet promotes a person’s good health. Paul Bäumer uses food to encourage Franz Kemmerich, his sick friend, “eat decently and you’ll soon be well again…Eating is the main thing” (Remarque, 30). Paul Bäumer feels that good food can heal all afflictions. The bread supply of the soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front was severely threatened when the rats became more and more numerous.
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.
Before Elie Wiesel and his father are deported, they do not have a significant relationship. They simply acknowledge each other’s existence and that is all. Wiesel recalls how his father rarely shows emotion while he was living in Sighet, Transylvania. When they are deported, Wiesel is not sure what to expect. He explains, “My hand shifted on my father’s arm. I had one thought-not to lose him. Not to be left alone” (Wiesel 27). Once he and his father arrive at Auschwitz, the boy who has never felt a close connection with his father abruptly realizes that he cannot lose him, no matter what. This realization is something that will impact Wiesel for the rest of his time at the camp.
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.
(It should be noted that when describing hardships of the concentration camps, understatements will inevitably be made. Levi puts it well when he says, ?We say ?hunger?, we say ?tiredness?, ?fear?, ?pain?, we say ?winter? and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men who lived in comfort and suffering in their homes. If the Lagers had lasted longer a new, harsh language would have been born; only this language could express what it means to toil the whole day?? (Levi, 123).)
The Europeans had bad concentration camps. They would barely feed the prisoners, and would work them to the bone. “Before being sent to a camp, a captured prisoner of
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.