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Elie Wiesel's journey through the Holocaust
Elie Wiesel's journey through the Holocaust
Elie Wiesel surviving the holocaust
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Nelson Mandela once said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion, people must learn to hate…” Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize winning novel, Night gives you a subjective to deeply personal impressions of the horrors of the Holocaust. Throughout the book, Wiesel explains his terrifying experiences at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland. In May of 1944, at the age of only fifteen, Wiesel and his family were deported to the largest and deadliest of the camps, Auschwitz. While in the camp he lost his father, mother, and little sister to the traumatizing, prejudicial, dehumanizing acts performed by those of German descent. On the other hand, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer …show more content…
Prize winning novel, To Kill A Mockingbird is famous for its appealing depiction of childhood innocence, racial prejudice, and its declaration that acts of human goodness can withstand the assault of evil.
When Atticus Finch, a prominent lawyer, agrees to defend a black man named Tom Robinson, who has been accused of raping a white woman, the majority of Maycomb’s racist white community is appalled. The black community must endure severe acts of prejudice and evil throughout this touching masterpiece of American literature. Although a continent and a decade separate the societies discussed in the respective novels, To Kill A Mockingbird and Night, both depict the harsh reality of prejudice, violence and dehumanization suffered by both people of Jewish descent and African Americans.
Acts of prejudice is an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason. This is evident in both novels in the way in which the two groups of people were treated. In the case of Night, it was those of Jewish descent, during the Holocaust who
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had acts of prejudice forced upon them. On the other hand, in To Kill A Mockingbird, acts of prejudice had been shown towards African Americans. In both Night and To Kill A Mockingbird prejudice was shown in many forms, including class gender and racial prejudice. “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 29). When Eliezer and his family arrived at Birkenau, the first of many “selections” occurred, during which individuals presumed weaker or less useful are weeded out to be killed. Eliezer and his father remained together, separated from Eliezer’s mother and younger sister, whom he never sees again. This event shows acts of prejudice because the SS guards at Birkenau sent the women to the right assuming, without thought or reason, they were weak and unable to work in the camps because of their gender. In To Kill A Mockingbird Scout faces many troubles of being a young woman, when she is frowned upon by Aunt Alexandra for not dressing like a young lady. While the Finch family faced constant emotional abuse for defending black Tom Robinson, an entire different form of prejudice was introduced in Night. Prejudice against the Jews was not just carried out by ignoring them as members of society, or yelling racial slurs at them, they were considered to be a huge problem for the German economy. Hitler was able to make all Jews seem so terrible, and convince many Germans, that they should be rid of entirely. Altogether forms of prejudice had been the same, yet different in the respective novels, Night and To Kill A Mockingbird. Violence is a behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
This is evident in both novels in which the way communities responded to such Violence. In the case of Night, after Eliezer and his father evacuated from Buna, it was every man for himself. “I don’t believe that he was finished off by an SS, for nobody had noticed. He must have died, trampled under the feet of the thousands of men who followed us.” (Wiesel 86). This statement made my Eliezer proves that while many individuals were making a run for it, they did not care about their own acts of violence that resulted in the murder of many. In the case of To Kill A Mockingbird, when Tom Robinson tried to escape from prison during an exercise period he was shot by the prison guards. “Seventeen bullet holes in him. They didn’t have to shoot him that much” (Lee 235). This statement made by Atticus Finch shows the violence white people brought upon blacks. Violence is also different in both novels in the way which it was brought upon those of Jewish culture and those of African American descent. In the case of Night, when the Jews were taken from Sighet and deported to concentration camps, many were taken to the crematoria, to be burned alive. Violence was a part of everyday life in the camps, Jews experienced both physical and mental abuse. On the other hand, in To Kill A Mockingbird, acts of violence were mainly mental. When Atticus was appointed to defend Tom Robinson, he
faced many racial slurs. Jem and Scout were also harassed at school by other children calling their father a “nigger-lover” (Lee 83). All in all violence had been the same, yet different in the respective novels, Night and To Kill A Mockingbird. Dehumanization is the action in which you deprive someone of their human qualities, personality, or spirit. This is evident in both novels in the way each group was depicted by the community or leaders as “dogs”. In the case of Night, the Jews were forced to sit in crowded wagons that had no space to move about in and treated like dogs. “If anyone goes missing, you will all be shot, like dogs.” (Wiesel 24). This shows how the German guards had no sense of moral ethics and treated the Jews like they were nothing. In the case of To Kill A Mockingbird, the blacks were often referred to as dogs and any white person, such as Dolphus Raymond, who associate with black persons were likely to suffer discrimination. When Atticus shoots the mad dog, it is a symbol of him defending Tom Robinson. By killing the dog he is taking away the chance of getting rabies, just like him defending Tom will cause acts of dehumanization upon himself. Acts of dehumanization were also different in the way people acted upon the different groups. In the case of Night, the Jews were not able to keep any objects that had meaning to them, when the Hungarian police barged into Sighet. “... a Jew was henceforth forbidden to own gold, jewelry, or any valuables.” (Wiesel 10-11). This shows how those of Jewish descent were deprived of their human personality and spirit. In the case of To Kill A Mockingbird, those who were African American had no respect from the white community. If you were white and tempted a black you were shamed by the society. "She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man." (Lee 204). This shows how mixed marriages were not accepted and those you dared to engage in one were deprived of their human qualities. On the whole acts of dehumanization had been the same, yet different in the respective novels, Night and To Kill A Mockingbird. As a result, Elie Wiesel’s Night and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird both depict the harsh reality of prejudice, violence and dehumanization suffered by both people of Jewish descent and African Americans. After Elie Wiesel wrote his novel he was presented with many awards such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America Congressional Gold Medal, and the French Legion of Honor. He is now a Political activist, professor and novelist. After Harper Lee wrote her novel, it was made into the well-received 1962 film with the same title, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. Today over fifteen million copies, translated into forty languages To Kill A Mockingbird is still an American masterpiece. Lee’s new novel Go Set a Watchman was originally submitted to her publishers before To Kill A Mockingbird, but it was assumed to have been lost. In 2014 it was rediscovered and features many of the same characters from To Kill A Mockingbird twenty years later. It is scheduled to be released to the public on July 14th, 2015.
Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. He is a Jewish man who is sent to a concentration camp, controlled by an infamous dictator, Hitler. Elie is stripped away everything that belongs to him. All that he has worked for in his life is taken away from him instantly. He is even separated from his mother and sister. On the other side of this he is fortunate to survive and tell his story. He describes the immense cruel treatment that he receives from the Nazis. Even after all of the brutal treatment and atrocities he experiences he does not hate the world and everything in it, along with not becoming a brute.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
In the 1930s-1940s, the Nazis took millions of Jews into their death camps. They exterminated children, families, and even babies. Elie Wiesel was one of the few who managed to live through the war. However, his life was forever scarred by things he witnessed in these camps. The book Night explained many of the harsh feelings that Elie Wiesel experienced in his time in various German concentration camps.
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
Throughout the Nobel Peace Prize award winner Night, a common theme is established around dehumanization. Elie Wiesel, the author, writes of his self-account within the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Being notoriously famed for its unethical methods of punishment, and the concept of laboring Jews in order to follow a regime, was disgusting for the wide public due to the psychotic ideology behind the concept. In the Autobiography we are introduced to Wiesel who is a twelve year old child who formerly lived in the small village of Sighet, Romania. Wiesel and his family are taken by the Nazi aggressors to the Concentration camp Auschwitz were they are treated like dogs by the guards. Throughout the Autobiography the guards use their authoritative
Elie Wiesel has gone through more in life than any of us could ever imagine. One of my favorite quotes from him says, “To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” In his novel “Night” we are given an in-depth look at the pure evil that was experienced during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. We see Wiesel go from a faithful, kind Jewish boy to a survivor. As he experiences these events, they change him drastically.
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.
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior, to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, and the struggle between blacks and whites. Atticus Finch, a lawyer and single parent in a small southern town in the 1930's, is appointed by the local judge to defend Tom Robinson, a black man, who is accused of raping a white woman. Friends and neighbors object when Atticus puts up a strong and spirited defense on behalf of the accused black man. Atticus renounces violence but stands up for what he believes in. He decides to defend Tom Robinson because if he did not, he would not only lose the respect of his children and the townspeople, but himself
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.
The resistance of the Holocaust has claimed worldwide fame at a certain point in history, but the evidence that the evil-doers themselves left crush everything that verifies the fantasy of the Holocaust. For an example, in Poland, the total Jewish population of over thirty-three hundred thousand suddenly plummeted to three hundred thousand. Ten percent of the population survived the Holocaust in Poland. Almost every country that the Nazis have conquered has the same percent of survival as Poland. In Elie Wiesel Wiesel’s memoir Night, the activities in the concentration camps, the suffering of Jews, and the disbelief of the inhumane actions of the Nazis result in making people resist the truth.
Authors sometimes refer to their past experiences to help cope with the exposure to these traumatic events. In his novel Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the devastating and horrendous events of the Holocaust, one of the world’s highest points for man’s inhumanity towards man, brutality, and cruel treatment, specifically towards the Jewish Religion. His account takes place from 1944-1945 in Germany while beginning at the height of the Holocaust and ending with the last years of World War II. The reader will discover through this novel that cruelty is exemplified all throughout Wiesel's, along with the other nine million Jews’, experiences in the inhumane concentration camps that are sometimes referred to as “death factories.”
Even though extraordinary changes have been made in the past to achieve racial equality, America is still racist, especially in schools. In the novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” written by Harper Lee, Atticus Finch is criticized for defending a black man accused of raping a white woman. During the 1930s, the time this novel took place, America was a very segregated country. At the time when Harper Lee wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird," America was fighting a civil rights movement. The events of racism in “To Kill a Mockingbird” reflect the time period.
The novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee is a simplistic view of life in the Deep South of America in the 1930s. An innocent but humorous stance in the story is through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch. Scout is a young adolescent who is growing up with the controversy that surrounds her fathers lawsuit. Her father, Atticus Finch is a lawyer who is defending a black man, Tom Robinson, with the charge of raping a white girl. The lives of the characters are changed by racism and this is the force that develops during the course of the narrative.
Few people are the same as they are on the street in their homes. Few people can treat others equally; no matter what colour their skin is. Atticus Finch is one of those precious few. Racism in the town of Maycomb is nothing but disguised by the polite smiles and ladies missionary meetings; although it is the strongest belief that each person of the town holds apart from some such as Atticus. Racism is an issue of great importance, yet to the eye of a visitor waltzing through, it's just a slight whisk of air.
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.