Never Shall I Forget Elie Wiesel Analysis

Writing about an event that has occurred can be hard for some writers, to write about the atrocities of the Holocaust authors used several different writing techniques. Many survivors of the Holocaust have yet to tell their stories to the world because of the unspeakable memories in their minds. The Holocaust was a cruel time that was from 1933 to 1945. The biggest memory of the Holocaust is the killing of 11 million people in total, 6 million Jews as well as 5 million non Jews. The leader who did this was Adolf Hitler. Through the years, Hitler slowly made his way to doing intolerable things to the Jews. Hitler had the Jews put into concentration camps where the prisoners were starved, tortured, and worked to death. With few survivors of the Holocaust one may think, how does an author, or survivor

of the Holocaust, write about the horrific events they experienced?

The very few authors or survivors who have memories of the Holocaust used many approaches such as powerful imagery, figurative language, repetition, and powerful word choice to describe the unforgettable.

One of the techniques that authors used to try and describe the horrid events of the Holocaust was powerful imagery. Elie Wiesel states in his excerpt in Doc A “Never shall I forget"....small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky." To put that experience into words that children are burning can affect one because Elie Wiesel used such a meaning and unforgettable scene, with the right words so that reader could get the image Elie wanted to send out. In Primo Levis’ excerpt,he states, "...temperature below freezing, wearing only a shirt, underpants, cloth jacket and trousers, and in one’s body nothing

but weakness, hunger and knowledge of the end drawing nearer.” (Doc C) Primo Levi used powerful imagery to describe how horrible the camp was that he was in. He states that the person suffering is weak and hungry as well as having little clothing to keep his body from the cold. Art Spiegelman shows powerful imagery in Doc D by using cartoons in a graphic novel. Spiegelman uses cartoons to describe the events of the Holocaust instead of trying to put it in words. In the cartoon, it is in black and white and shows one of the mice (the Jews) getting shot as well as a flashback from when one of the neighbor’s dog was shot (which is also shown in the cartoon). This cartoon gives the reader a descriptive and powerful image of how the times during the Holocaust where cruel because of all the events that happened in the cartoon. Powerful imagery was a helpful technique for these authors to help describe the image in the reader's head in a better way, which shows how powerful imagery is a useful technique to describe the Holocaust, as well as the memories it left several people.
Another approach that authors have used to describe the events of the Holocaust was figurative language. Elie Wiesel uses personification in Doc A by stating"...flames that consumed my faith forever.", "...nocturnal silence...", "...moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes." Elie Wiesel uses personification to tell how unreal the Holocaust may have seemed by using inhuman things such as how flames consumed Elie’s faith to describe the inhumanity of the Holocaust. Viktor Frankl also uses personification by stating in his excerpt Doc B #2, "The violin wept." Viktor uses personification to describe his sorrow from being separated from his wife. As well as how the violin is being used for joy to the Nazi officer's but for Viktor the violin describes the sorrow he is feeling due to the separation of him and his wife. Art Spiegelman uses onomatopoeias in his excerpt Doc D to show that the events in the story have a sound to describe certain things. Art Spiegelman uses onomatopoeia to tell the reader how gunshots and the horrific events of the Holocaust sounded in the concentration camps by using sounds such as "KPOW" and "KRACK”( Doc D) sounded when in the concentration camp. Another method that was used to describe the events of the Holocaust is personification, personification was used because it makes the meaning of the story more powerful to the reader.

Finally, another technique several authors used to describe the unforgettable moments of the Holocaust was repetition and powerful word choice. Elie Wiesel used repetition by stating, “Never shall I forget..." (Doc A) seven times. Elie did this to tell the reader that because since he has saw children’s bodies turn into ashes, that it is unforgettable and makes it unforgettable for the reader as well. Phil Chernofsky repeats "Jew" (Doc B #1) 6 million times in the book And Every Single One Was Someone, which was made to show that every single word that said “Jew” in that book was important and mattered in a way to somebody. Primo Levi uses the words"winter" and "hunger." in Doc C, Primo uses these words because the prisoner’s that are suffering in the camp has a more of a impact by these words rather than a person who lives a happy healthy life and did not have to struggle like the prisoner’s did. Elie Wiesel also used powerful and important word choice by using words like "consumed", "deprived", "condemned", "nocturnal", and "elude." (Doc A) Elie uses the word “consumed” because he has seen so much that the children burning has “...consumed his faith.” The reasoning for Elie to use this vocabulary is so that the reader can know his emotions and by using words that were more meaningful to Elie than the actual definition of the word. Repetition and powerful vocabulary is also another way to describe the events of the Holocaust because it can let the reader discover a new meaning of the story.
To describe the unforgettable events of the Holocaust,authors have used many different techniques, such as…, to write about it. Powerful Imagery is one way that many authors have used to write about their memories of the Holocaust. There is evidence for powerful imagery in three out of the five documents provided in this DBQ.(A,C,D) Every author from these three documents gives the reader a very powerful and memorable message through the text, in Doc A Elie Wiesel describes all of the memories he had in the camp such as when he saw innocent people die for no reason. Another writing technique that authors used to say the unspeakable was figurative language. Personification and onomatopoeia were the two common techniques used in documents A, B, and D. Most of these authors used the personification to tell how unrealistic the Holocaust by using inhuman things. In Doc A Elie uses “...nocturnal silence...” In Doc D Art Spiegelman used onomatopoeias to describe how the gunshot of a mice(The Jew) sounded.Finally, there was the use of repetition and powerful word choice. Figurative language was used was through onomatopoeia which was used to give the reader a reality check to state that the Holocaust wasn't unforgettable This writing technique was used in three out of the five documents.(A,B#1,C) Repetition was used by stating a word(s) several times, such as "Never shall I forget..." or "Jew" Several authors used this to tell the reader that what's repeated must have been important to the author due to the atrocities someone has experienced. There is also powerful word choice. Powerful word choice was using specific words that were meaningful to the author it created more depth and realness to the story. Telling something to a person can be very hard to do, but if the right strategies are used to make your point across it can be a little bit easier. All of these authors have used different but yet similar ways to describe their stories of the Holocaust to anyone it interests.