Guilt is an extremely powerful emotion that can consume one from the inside out. In the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, everybody, including the Jews act out against each other and do not stand up for one another. In this story, Jews are forced from their homes and brought to concentration camps with rough conditions. Elie’s persecution occurred in the following concentration camps: Auschwitz, Buna, Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald. The Jews took on an overwhelming amount of hardships, but the most difficult obstacle to conquer was man's lack of humanity to man. Throughout the book, the inhumanity against man develops from widespread prejudice to terribly personal punishments.
Decisions were made that may have seemed small and insignificant,
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There were personal attacks which led to a brutal outcome for millions of people. The attacks were often lead by the Kapos, the supervisors of the camps. As the overseers of the camps, the Nazis dealt leadership to the Kapos. The Kapos themselves were prisoners of the concentration camp; Although prisoners, the Kapos were assigned to barracks full of Jews. Often times Elie had not had the advantage of a charitable Kapo. In Night, Elie tells how he is shocked by what he witnessed,“My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked.” (Wiesel 39). The Kapos were ruthless. They wanted to beat the Jews down even if they were only able to cut small notches into the Jews calm exterior. The Kapos took no pity on the other prisoners and were very harsh. Elie talks of his foreman, Franek, and his especially deep hatred towards Elie, “That presented Franek with the opportunity to torment him and on a daily basis thrash him savagely.” (Wiesel 55). Franek didn’t like Elie when they met nor when they parted. Consequently, the Kapos of the camps were choosing to take out anger on unsuspecting prisoners, often with no logic behind their actions; except to get under their skin.
The inhumanity in the Holocaust was unbelievable. So many horrible things happened in this bitter time
The many traumatizing experiences he had been through affected Elie and his outlook on the world around him. Fear can affect people in ways they never thought possible. Sometimes, they lose sight of who they once were and become a whole new person. The various experiences Elie faced in the concentration camps affected his whole world. Elie, a devoted Jewish believer, lost faith in God after realizing that he cannot have faith in a God who tolerates inhumanity such as he went through.
Millions of Jews forced out of their homes and are either killed immediately or forced to work until bodies gave up on them and died. Night focuses on the aspect of inhumanity a lot. The Nazi’s practically dehumanized the Jews and caused them to suffer each day, which is evident in Night. In the book, however, the Nazi’s are not the only ones subject to inhumanity; the Jews are a part of it also. Due to the harsh treatment, many of the Jew lose a sense of empathy. For example, when Eliezer’s father was practically dead the other prisoners beat him just because he didn’t deserve to live any more. The author is ultimately trying to argue that under the right conditions we may all lose our
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.
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
When they first arrived at the camp, his father asked their Blockalteste where the toilets were. “Then as if waking from a deep sleep, he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours. I stood petrified. What had happened to me? My father had just been struck in front of me, and I had not even blinked...Only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal’s flesh.”(Wiesel,39) This shows that Elie would have beaten the guard had he been allowed to. This next quote shows Elie much later, near Buchenwald in a cattle car, cramped and starving. His father’s corpse has just been thrown off the train “And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like:Free at last!...”(Wiesel,112) This shows Elie thinking that if he searched inside himself for remorse, he would have found something that said he was free from a
So as the morning Sun rose. The light beamed on Christopher's face. The warmth of the sun welcomed him to a new day and woke up in a small house in Los Angeles. Christopher is a tall, male, that loves technology and video games. He stretched and went to the restroom it was 9 o'clock and he was thankful it was spring break and didn’t have to go to school. Christopher made his way to the kitchen trying not wake up his parents and made himself breakfast. He served himself cereal Honey Bunches of Oats to be exact with almond milk. Then he took a shower and watched some YouTube videos before doing his homework.
The significance of night throughout the novel Night by Elie Wiesel shows a poignant view into the daily life of Jews throughout the concentration camps. Eliezer describes each day as if there was not any sunshine to give them hope of a new day. He used the night to symbolize the darkness and eeriness that were brought upon every Jew who continued to survive each day in the concentration camps. However, night was used as an escape from the torture Eliezer and his father had to endure from the Kapos who controlled their barracks. Nevertheless, night plays a developmental role of Elie throughout he novel.
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.”
Many different responses have occurred to readers after their perusal of this novel. Those that doubt the stories of the holocaust’s reality see Night as lies and propaganda designed to further the myth of the holocaust. Yet, for those people believing in the reality, the feelings proffered by the book are quite different. Many feel outrage at the extent of human maliciousness towards other humans. Others experience pity for the loss of family, friends, and self that is felt by the Holocaust victims.
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.
On their way to the concentration camp, a German officer said, “’There are eighty of you in the car… If anyone is missing, you’ll all be shot like “dogs” ”’ (Wiesel 24). This shows that the Germans compared the Jews to dogs or animals, and that the German have no respect towards the Jews. Arrived at the concentration camp, the Jews were separated from their friends and family. The first thing of the wagon, a SS officer said, “’Men to the left! Women to the right!”’ (Wiesel 29). After the separation, Eliezer saw the crematories. There he saw “’a truck [that] drew close and unloaded its hold: small children, babies … thrown into the flames.” (Wiesel 32). This dehumanize the Jews, because they were able to smell and see other Jews burn in the flames. Later on the Jew were forced to leave their cloth behind and have been promise that they will received other cloth after a shower. However, they were force to work for the new cloth; they were forced to run naked, at midnight, in the cold. Being force to work for the cloth, by running in the cold of midnight is dehumanizing. At the camp, the Jews were not treated like human. They were force to do thing that was unhuman and that dehumanized
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.
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
Night is a dramatic book that tells the horror and evil of the concentration camps that many were imprisoned in during World War II. Throughout the book the author Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. There are many examples in the beginning of Night where people are trying to keep and strengthen their faith but there are many more examples of people rebelling against God and forgetting their religion.
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.