Human Injustice In Elie Wiesel's Night

Human Darkness in a night

An era of human darkness and human cruelty can all swiftly present in one cold night. Elie Wiesel, a teenager living in Sighet, Transylvania, and most importantly, a Jew, experienced this first hand when the Hungarian police rushed into his Jewish community, demanding that everyone must prepare for departure. This would start an event in human history that would portray mankind as cruel and inhumane and would end the lives of many innocent people. This portrait of human disgrace and injustice would be the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s non fiction story in “Night”, shows Elie’s adventure as he experiences the depths of human darkness in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In “Night,” Elie Wiesel argues that the truest of evils can void a man of good, and through the sheer magnitude of evil, can wipe out all faith in a person, ending with the disappearance of human characteristic and hope.

Furthermore, the evils of the Holocaust can bring men of good faith and morals to a complete breaking point.

The first instance of madness, that the evils of the Holocaust spread, where when Moishe the Beadle was explaining a gruesome experience of what the Holocaust had caused. Elie stated a quote from Moishe saying, “I went to Sighet to describe to you my death so that you might be ready yourselves while there is still time. Life? I no longer care to live,” which exemplified the potential of destruction the Holocaust contains as he was a man of spirit and devote faith before this incident, but now he is a broken man that is considered mad by his past peers (Wiesel

7).
Secondly, the destructive effects of the Holocaust broke families as the Holocaust was a cruel test for inhuman survival. Elie states “He had felt his father growing weaker and, believing that the end was near, had thought by his seperation to free himself of a burden that could diminish his own chance of survival” (Wiesel 91) This situation was one of many that had people split relations in order to survive the cruelty of the holocaust.
Finally, the Holocaust rocked the very core of human instinct. The holocaust was a heart wrenching experience that spiked the very core of humanity itself. Elie explained that, “Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves into the provisions. That’s all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread,” which captivated the aftermath of the Holocaust, as it left a group of normal and innocent humans, as primitive beings itching for only the thought of survival (Wiesel 115). Essentially, the depths of humanity were shaken as the gruesome and unjust Holocaust stirred up the human mind and left a group of good people in a daunting situation.
Elie Wiesel's “Night,” is a compelling and eye opening novel that is one of its kind in the message that it portrayed. The message that it portrays is horrifying as these difficult and demeaning situations of the Holocaust showed the potential of what evil can do to humanity. Elie’s message of what evil can do is scary and terrible, however, Elie shared this dark experience with a significant factor in mind, to make sure that the cruelty and inhumanity of the Holocaust is known, in order to make sure something like this never happens again.