Similarities Between Night And Schindler's List

There were many aspects in World War two, but the Holocaust is likely the most famous to date. A particular interest is shown for the Holocaust simply because of the unbelievable amount of inhumanity that was exhibited. Although saddening, the attention that has been focused on uncovering the truths of this terrifying event is necessary. Truly understanding how awful the Holocaust was helps to ensure that something similar will never happen again. The book Night and the movie Schindler’s List are two recollections of the Holocaust written from two, very different, perspectives.

****Both the movie and the book portray a timeline of events beginning with the start of the Holocaust or the taking of the Jews and concluding with the end of the

war. Night was written from the point of view of a Jew who was taken prisoner into the concentration camps and survived, while Schindler’s List was told from the point of view of a rich, German man who owned a factory and took in Jews as workers to save them from the camps. Both works express terrors of the Holocaust in a way that someone who was on the outside never could.
Although Night and Schindler’s List were told from contrastive perspectives, they are similar in a number of ways. The overall process of how the Jews were tricked into being taken is similar in both works. To start there is a religious scene or aspect to show just how dedicated the Jews were to their faith. Next the Jews were registered and sent to live in a ghetto made up of only Jews. Finally, when the Nazi party came for them, all Jewish people were evacuated from their homes and crammed into cattle cars to be transported to whichever camp they were going to. In both the movie and the book the Jews were promised their belongings at a later date, but that promise was not kept. Once the Jews were brought into the camps, hard work was their only way to survive; if they were not working or unable to work they were killed. Inside the camps a selection happened to separate the sick from the healthy; sick Jews were then killed. Both works express that the Jews maintained hope or faith to a certain degree. In Night, the main character, Eliezer, says he loses faith; he does, but he still is hopeful due to his father. In Schindler’s List, the factory was a place where the Jews maintained hope and faith. Both, Schindler’s List and Night have “safe havens” where the Jews were hopeful to be placed. In Night the safe haven was the camp Buna and in Schindler’s List it was Schindler’s factory. Both stories portrayed Auschwitz as a very dark place. In Auschwitz, the Jews were shaved free of all hair, stripped of all clothes and given rags, and placed into steaming hot showers and then thrown out into the freezing air. At the end of both works the Jews were liberated. Overall, both Night and Schindler’s List illustrate the hardships the Jews endured throughout the Holocaust.
Night and Schindler’s List also had blatant differences.

The biggest difference was obviously the narrators of each story. Schindler’s List describes what the event was like for Germans who disagreed with the situation at hand; they suffered too, it is not easy to watch such terrible things happen. Night portrayed the brutal experience the Jews themselves endured. A noticeable difference between the book and the movie was the violence displayed; in Schindler’s list the violence was more of people being shot on the spot and Night was more of the conditions the Jews had to withstand in the camps- often more agonizing than being shot. Along with Schindler’s factory, Schindler’s List also followed the story of Amom Goth, one of the cruelest concentration camp owners of the Holocaust. ******Violence is more than evident in both works, but the following of Amom made Schindler’s story more personally violent at times; showing scenes of Amom shooting people for fun and commanding his Nazi workers to do the same. This was clearly shown at the beginning of the movie when the Nazis are emptying out the ghetto. The ghetto in Schindler’s List was emptied much more violently than the ghetto in Night was. The violence in Night occurred mainly in the way the Jews were treated inside the camps. The burning of the bodies, freezing to death etc. All of those very real circumstances through which the Jews were put. Also, in the beginning of Schindler’s List, when the ghettos were being emptied the Jews knew where they were going. While in Night, the Jews had some preconceived ideas that they were being relocated to another ghetto- type situation. Another difference in the two works was how the children and women were treated in the camps. In Night, women and children were said to be cremated upon entering the camp. In Schindler’s List there were many women who worked in the camps, and the children were allowed in at first too and then taken away later to be killed. At the end of both

the book and movie the Jews were liberated. Only in Night, they were liberated by the United States and given help to relocate and such; in Schindler’s List, Schindler’s Jews were liberated by the Soviet Union and they were not given any help. In general, Schindler’s List and Night pertain to two different aspects of the Holocaust.
All in all, both Night and Schindler’s List portray a dark time in our world’s history. As mentioned before, Night is told from inside the mind of a Jewish Holocaust survivor of concentration camps, and Schindler’s List follows the story of a rich, German man who saved as many Jewish lives as he could through a factory which was intended to be a money generator during the war. Though illustrated differently, both the book and the movie depict a very real event extremely well. Without works like these two, the world would be clueless as to what actually happened throughout the Holocaust, and proper respect and condolences would not be held.