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Imagine living in a place where you are referred to as a number and not a name. That is exactly what many people, mostly Jews had to experience during 1933 through 1945. “Approximately 11 million people were killed, including one million Jewish children alone. Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed.” One of the survivors was called Elie Wiesel, he was a young boy at that time but now he is fighting for human rights. Wiesel fought for human rights because people were suffering around him, and their rights were violated. To begin, Wiesel fought for human rights because he knew what it felt like to suffer. The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech Delivered by Elie Wiesel
An estimated 11 million people died in the Holocaust. 6 million were Jews. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel tells his story as a Holocaust survivor. Throughout his book he describes the tremendous obstacles he overcame, not only himself, but with his father as well. The starvation and cruel treatment did not help while he was there. Elie makes many choices that works to his advantage. Choice plays a greater factor in surviving Auschwitz.
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.
After listening to a testimony from Ralph Fischer, a Holocaust survivor I have gained a new level of understanding to what happened in those few years of terror when the Nazi party was at power. On top of that I have learned that they are just like other people in many different ways. As a child, Ralph went to school, played with friends, and spent time with his family. All that is comparable to any other modern-day child. However, as the Nazi party rose to power he was often bullied, left out, or even beat for being Jew. Although not as extreme, I have often been mistreated because I was different, and it’s easy to understand the pain of being left out just because you are not the same. Eventually he had to drop out of school and then had
Elie Wiesel shows great respect for America. He complements the soldiers, the first lady and the president. He informs us about how young he was and felt anger and rage towards the Nazis. He also notices the soldiers that saved him had great rage which translates to true compassion for one another. He gives us a great history lesson and who was indifferent especially towards how towns were miles away from the camps and did nothing about it. He impounded the heart breaking on how doing business with them until 1942 and we knew what was going on. He questions the indifference we had.
Many people have given speeches like his, but the significance of this lecture was the passion he showed and still felt for this Earth, and its people, after all the horrible events that had happened to him in his life. He tells anyone who will listen to his speech to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Wiesel vocalizes that being a bystander and allowing bad things to happen is just as bad, in his mind, as being the person who actually does those bad things. Elie Wiesel says, “In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.” Through his speech he tries to get anyone that is willing to listen to stop just accepting that the world is evil. He tells them to try and change it. The audience in the room he was speaking to never stood up and applauded. Instead, the audience gave Wiesel their undivided attention, never saying a
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.
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.
”Lie down on it! On your belly! I obeyed. I no longer felt anything except the lashes of the whip. One! Two! He took time between the lashes. Ten eleven! Twenty-three. Twenty four, twenty five! It was over. I had not realized it, but I fainted” (Wiesel 58). It was hard to imagine that a human being just like Elie Wiesel would be treating others so cruelly. There are many acts that Elie has been through with his father and his fellow inmates. Experiencing inhumanity can affect others in a variety of ways. When faced with extreme inhumanity, The people responded by becoming incredulous, losing their faith, and becoming inhumane themselves.
Concentration camps gave numbers to help keep track of their prisoners. It made the Jews feel unimportant which was the first step to dehumanizing them. When Elie got his number it was easy to see how it made him feel unwanted as he said in this quote from the book Night, “I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.Pg. 42”
Prisoners in concentration camps committed small acts of rebellion against the Holocaust that outlived the guards and the Nazis. Even though their acts could not save their lives, they sparked questions that the survivors, such as Elie Wiesel, could recall years after the Holocaust ended.
“He’s the man who’s lived through hell without every hating. Who’s been exposed to the most depraved aspects of human nature but still manages to find love, to believe in God, to experience joy.” This was a quote said by Oprah Winfrey during her interview with Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor. No person who has not experienced the Holocaust and all its horrors could ever relate to Elie Wiesel. He endured massive amounts of torture, physically, mentally, and emotionally just because he was a Jew. One simple aspect of Wiesel’s life he neither chose or could changed shaped his life. It is important to take a look at Wiesel’s life to see the pain that he went through and try to understand the experiences that happened in his life. Elie Wiesel is a well respected, influential figure with an astonishing life story. Although Elie Wiesel had undergone some of the harshest experiences possible, he was still a man able to enjoy life after the Holocaust.
All the men that were left in the concentration camps were tattooed with a number that became their new name. “The three ‘veteran’ prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on,I had no other name” (Wiesel 38). They did not have the freedom, the liberty of an actual name. They also did not have freedom of where they wanted to be they had to stay in the camps or they would die. They were brutally tortured and the Germans took all they had.
...s surprised because your questions have been asked since the day we became people” (Wells 139). It seems as if Jews were not even considered real people until millions of them were murdered. The Holocaust was a tragic, devastating, and unforgettable event. One should never deny what they have never personally been through.
One main way the concentration camps dehumanized Elie and his fellow prisoners was through the stripping of their identities. They also do not use the prisoners names, choosing instead to call them by number. “The three ‘veteran’ prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I became A-7713. From then on, I had no other name.”(p. 42). Elie was not treated as a human being with a name and an identity, but as a thing, a gear in a machine. The prisoners also face many other examples of dehumanization that eventually degrade their will to live and to go on. All the terrible things they’ve seen weigh heavy on them, and they begin to lose their hope and their faith. Early on, Elie goes past a cremation pit and sees babies being thrown
There were many things that happened over the years of the Holocaust, but the most notable of those was the killing of so many people. But the Jewish people were not the only ones that were hunted. Many non-Jewish groups of people were persecuted and killed in the Holocaust. Some of these other groups were Gypsies, homosexuals, Soviet soldiers, Polish citizens, and the mentally and physically disabled and ill. After all this time, the death toll is in - roughly 11 million total. The toll, not including the Jewish people is over 5 million- 15,000 homosexuals, 200,000 mentally ill, 1.5 million non-Jewish Polish citizens, 3.5 million Russians, and so many others.