Rhetoric In Elie Weisel's Fifty Years Later

The Holocaust was a major historical event during the Second World War in which Jews were segregated, sent into labor camps where they were nearly starved and over-worked, and were killed for the simple desire of ending their existence. The Holocaust forever left a mark on the history of not only those who lived through it but, through their accounts, it has impacted all humanity. Evident examples of these portrayals are those of Elie Weisel through the novel Night, and Judy (Weissenberg) Cohen through, poem, Fifty Years Later. Although the authors are both using rhetoric, they are using it to fulfill distinct purposes; Weisel attempts to tell his personal experience as he lives through the struggles of being a Jew during the Holocaust and

Cohen tries to parallel the way the camp prisoners had to live compared to the way her intended audience lives now.
Cohen writes this poem towards young adults with the ultimate purpose of ensuring hatred and disrespect like that of the Holocaust, never feeds into such a horrifying event again.

Weisel voices the traumatizing experience which he will never be able to shake out of his mind with no particular audience but to those who are interested. The first evident rhetoric used in both pieces is the credibility of the speaker as they both were first-hand witnesses to the atrocities of the Nazis. Cohen mentions "To inform and teach my story is told", which reminds the audience that she is not telling a made-up story but communicating her own experience (stanza12). While reading Elie's account, reminders that the book is a product of personal experience and not imagination are also evident such as when he mentions his prisoner number of identification which was given to everyone in concentration camps: "The three 'veterans', with needles in their hands, engraved a number on our left arms. I became A-7713"

(Wiesel 39). The fact that the author was there, brings Night to life because the reader realizes that the novel is not fictional but a true story which only makes the portrayal more impactful. In Fifty Years Later, as Cohen makes her speech through the poem, the impact is also greater because she is not simply asking the audience to prevent an event like the Holocaust, but to prevent people like herself who stands before them, to be humiliated and abused the way she was. Additionally, because this event is so modern, the credibility is also greater. In ancient or very old literary pieces, because they happened so long ago, their impact tends to fade. However, when the pieces were published, both authors were alive and that is meaningful because it alerts the audience that if something like such happened not long ago, what is to say it cannot happen again?
Emotional appeal is the most effective persuading method.

Simply thinking of the Holocaust creates emotions of pity and anger. Cohen and Wiesel both draw those emotions and many more through their words in their literary pieces. In both portrayals, anger is directed toward the Nazis. In the concentration camps, Wiesel shows that German officers beat prisoners for no reason like Idek who "was seized with one of his fits of frenzy […] leapt on me like a wild animal, hitting me […] until I was covered with blood. […] Suddenly he calmed down. As if nothing had happened, he sent me back to work" (Wiesel 50). Likewise, indifference towards the German officers is transmitted towards the audience in Cohen's poem when she mentions, "how do I tell you about losing family and friends in a matter of minutes by moving thumbs in white gloves, belong to a Nazi a so-called human being?"(stanza 4). Additionally, both Cohen and Wiesel make the reader feel pity for them and all those who had to live under the inhumane circumstances of the concentration camps and those who did not make it out alive. In Night, a gruesome picture is drawn as the author says, "Babies! Yes, I saw it- saw it with my own eyes... those children in the flames"(Wiesel 30). Cohen aims to make his audience feel pity but also guilty by making a parallel comparison: "How do I tell you about human-created hunger, hopeless, no-end-in-sight, when, perhaps, you just had a good meal and feel full and warm inside?" (stanza 2).

Wiesel, unlike Cohen, decides to also focus on making his readers feel despondency. Throughout Night, the protagonist loses more and more of himself, he starts off fighting to survive but as time goes by, death does not seem so bad, he becomes hopeless and this is shown when he explains, "The student of the Talmud, the child that I was, had been consumed in the flames […] A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it" (Wiesel 34). Although both pieces shared moods like pity and anger, the authors decided to focus on certain ones to fulfill their purpose. Meanwhile Wiesel focused on making the reader feel the despondency he felt to give them a taste of what it was like for him, Cohen focused on making her audience feel guilty because they have everything when the Holocaust prisoners had nothing with the purpose of persuading them to take action.
Due to being based on a historical event, both compositions appeal to logos often. In Night, when his father was dying, although he loved his father, he could not help but feel just a bit of relief. While the reader may think that is unacceptable, the advice "don’t give a ration of bread and soup to your old father. There's nothing you can do for him. You're killing yourself. Instead you ought to be having his ration" somehow becomes reasonable considering the circumstances the Holocaust has him in (Wiesel 105). By using logos, the author totally transforms the reader's way of thinking to a more sympathetic view taking into account the conditions everyone is living in. This effect fulfills Wiesel's purpose of communicating to the public what it was really like being an insider in the Holocaust. In the poem, Cohen uses reasoning to get to the point that nobody can really understand what it was like living like a concentration camp prisoner. She uses reasoning by comparing the way the audience lives to the way she had to live during the Holocaust, concluding that they have it so much easier. For example, "How do I tell you about the genocide of six million and more during which my family lost eighty-one, when you can happily look at yours and declare missing: NONE" (Stanza 8). This reasoning leads the audience to want to take action and do something to prevent such inhumane treatment from happening once more.
Both, Night and Fifty Years Later, use rhetoric to accomplish their works' goal. Wiesel looks to portray the reality of what he lived through in the Holocaust in the most vivid way possible meanwhile Cohen wants to impact the young with her call of action toward peace. Although they have different purposes they both use the same rhetoric to complete their intention. Both authors possess the same amount of credibility because they lived through everything they tell in their accounts. Both pieces evoked pity on the Holocaust victims and anger on the German officers who caused the inhumane acts. However, Wiesel focused on translating the emotions realistically to make the author feel connected to the protagonist; one of these emotions was despondency which was a reasonable emotion in a person living in such hopeless and dark conditions. On the other hand, Cohen focuses on making her audience feel guilty so they are impacted and motivated to take action in the future. Logic is applied evidently by both authors but for distinct intentions. In the poem, Cohen reasons that her audience cannot understand how truly bad it was in those camps because of the comfortable way they live. In Night, Wiesel uses logic to supply the reader with sympathy on the prisoners' actions which, in different circumstances would be unacceptable. Logos, Pathos, and Ethos are all used in similar and different ways by both authors but to fulfill distinct purposes.