Roberto Benigni's Film Accurate Representation Of The Holocaust?

Roberto Benigni's film Life is Beautiful is not an accurate representation of the Holocaust because Roberto Benigni’s film portrays it as an object of ridicule. In his film, he excludes the hardship that the prisoners went through. Guido makes the camp into a game for his son. The film excludes a lot of important events that took place during the Holocaust. In contrast,Elie Wiesel's novel Night is a more accurate representation because the author of the book Eile Wiesel wrote about his personal experience in the camps.

Life is Beautiful is more of a comedic than an informational film about the holocaust. It has more funny events than tragic ones. Such as when they first arrive at the camp the guard asks if someone spoke German and Guido

volunteers even though he did not know how to speak German. He does this to convince his son that the camp and events that were going on were a game. This is a poor way to portray the Holocaust because he was trying to make this event seem playful to his son, instead of telling him what was really taking place. Also, the guard’s actions were inaccurate because Guido got away with a lot of things like lying that he spoke German. He also gets away with hiding his child through most of the film, and was able to sneak into the female camp. The guards did not find the son throughout the whole film, which is hard to believe because no child can hide for that long, without being seen. The film had a lack of killings, even though killing the prisoners was one of the worst things that happened in the camps. It was a big part of the Holocaust because they had camps for killing and the film did not have but one, which was the killing of Guido (Holocaust Encyclopedia) .The concentration camps were portrayed badly, the film’s camp looked way better than the real ones. It seems like they were free to leave the resting space when they wanted to, because when Guido’s son wants to go home Guido packs up what they had and just walks out the door. The film needed to be more serious and have more events in it to make it a little more accurate, like the book Night.
The book Night is a superior example of the Holocaust because the author of the book, Elie Wiesel, was a prisoner during this time.

He provided the readers with events that happened to him and the prisoners, for example, the removal of the gold crowns. The Nazis took/ removed all the gold from each and every Jew. (Wiesel 51). The Selection was a pivotal moment in every concentration camp because it dictates whether you live or die. Elie goes through his first one when they arrive in Birkenau, and is separated from his mom and sisters. An inmate came and warned them to say Eli was 18, not 15, and his father was 40, not 50, because if they lied, they could stay together (Wiesel 29). Elie had to get foot surgery and while he was still in the process of recovering, rumors swept through the camp that the battlefront had suddenly drawn nearer (80). He had to run with the other Jews or he was going to get killed, so Elie decided to run on his foot even though he just had surgery. This is a great example of how the Jews that really wanted to live would do anything to stay alive. Even though these two stories took place in two different settings they were both supposed to give information on the Holocaust and how the Jews were being treated. Night did a better job of doing that than Life is

Beautiful.
Life is Beautiful takes place in the 1930s in Italy, and during this time Benito Mussolini was the dictator.

In 1938, while the Italians were ruled under the fascist Mussolini,passed a series of racial laws that placed many restrictions on the country's Jewish people. At the time the laws were enforced upon 46,000 Jews that lived in Italy. Italian Jews were traditionally secular and very united often intermarrying people that weren't Jews. In July 1943, the Fascist fell. Two months later, Nazi German forces occupied the country. When they did this they made Mussolini the head of the new Fascist regime, “The Italian Social Republic”, even though the Germans did not have any power. September 1943 was the beginning of arrests and deportations of Jews to the concentration and extermination camps. Between September 1943 and March 1945, about 10,000 jews were deported (The Holocaust in Italy). Jews were living in Poland for 800 years before the Nazi occupation. After the takeover of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939, many of the Jews who were still in the area were forced into staying in ghettos (The Holocaust). In December 1941 the killing of the Jews began in Chelmno with gas vans, and the murdering of Polish Jews in Auschwitz started in March 1942 (The Holocaust). Between March and July 1942 the Germans created three death camps in Poland which were Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. About 1,700,00 Jews were killed in these camps by the end of 1943.

At the end of the war, about 380,000 Polish Jews were still alive in Poland, the Soviet Union, or in the camps in Austria, Czech, and Germany.
The novel Night will always be a better representation, because it provides more valid information about the Holocaust then the film Life is Beautiful. This film did a good job of trying to make the Holocaust humorous, but did a pleasing job on explaining the hardship, inhumane and tragic things that took place during this event in history.