The Prevalence Of Anti-Semitism In Elie Wiesel's Night

Imagine being in a situation where someone comes to warn your village about impending danger involving everyone in the city being deported to labor camps. How many people would choose to believe them? During the 1930s through the 1940s, Adolf Hitler, a German dictator, put into practice a mass genocide of many European Jews in an event known as the Holocaust. The Jews were placed into concentration and death camps and had laborious work forced upon them. Although the majority of victims were unable to leave the camps, a few people managed to escape. Some of these people returned to their home towns and attempted to warn their fellow Jews about their impending fate. Despite many of their efforts however, the majority of the people they attempted

Many people thought that those who were trying to get people to listen to them were just looking for attention and sympathy. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy and survivor of the Holocaust, Eliezer explains that no one was listening to a man by the name of Moishe the Beadle, who was trying to warn the Jews of Sighet about the Holocaust. Elie describes how people refused to listen to Moishe, saying, “he was imagining things. Others flatly said that he had gone mad.” The Jews that were making these assumptions did not believe that the warnings were bona fide. These people, assuming that Moishe was imagining everything or “was not thinking right”, did not take his warnings seriously. Another point that Eliezer brought up, is that many people though Moishe was looking for sympathy, saying, “... they refused to listen. Some even insinuated that he only wanted their pity” Instead of understanding what he was saying to them, the people of Sighet ignored the threats because they did not believe that Moishe was trying to do anything other than gain their sympathy. Rather than noticing the impending danger, these people assumed that Moishe was only seeking attention. Another Holocaust survivor, Hedi Pope, also told of someone attempting to warn her town of the horrors that they would soon have to face.