Night by Ellie Wiesel: The Experience of a Young Boy Trapped in the Holocaust

The book “Night” by Elie Wiesel is non-fiction, which is based on Elie’s experience throughout the Holocaust as a young boy. Evidently the protagonist of this book is Elie, and he explains in detail everything that happens as he was a young “normal” child, to when he escapes from the concentration camp years later. His life before the Holocaust was very different from his life during the Holocaust. This experience led him to grow quickly and have a different perspective of life and society. Everything he witnesses forced him to mature quickly at a young age and open his eyes to all the cruelty around him.

Elie Wiesel was a young Jew in 1928, which lived a “normal” life, until the Nazi Holocaust changed his life for the worst. Elie grew up in a remote area of Transylvania called Sighet. His life would be described as ordinary. “His father, Shlomo, was a shoe keeper who was always helping people, and his mother Sarah, was a descendent of Hasidic rabbis and scholars.” (Wiesel’s Night Recalls the Holocaust, 1956) His life continues normally until Sighet is invaded by Nazi Germany, “The Nazi and their allies sought to finish the job of murdering every Jew in Europe” (Wiesel’s Night Recalls the Holocaust, 1956). Elie, his parents and three sisters were put into a cattle car filled with other Jews, and taken to Auschwitz concentration camp. When they arrived, Elie immediately had to face the beginning of his reality by witnessing his mother and younger sister taken to the gas chambers, “his mother and youngest sister were immediately murdered in a gas chamber” (Entering the Night of the Holocaust...)

Elie has to deal with the loss of his mother and sister. He also has to deal with his father’s unhealthy physical condition. Elie come...

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...vated him to write this book, and it is now recognized worldwide.

Elie is able to overcome hatred, racism, genocide and prejudice. These problems helped him grow and learn more about the real and cruel world. It also helped him exceed into his education so he can write the book ‘Night’ based on what he went through. It can be ironic how a person’s life can drastically change in a matter of years.

Works Cited

Totten, Samuel. “Entering the “Night” of the Holocaust: Studying Elie Wiesel’s “Night”

Bloom’s Literature, Facts on File, Inc. 2001 Web. 12 March 2014

Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar,

Straus and Giroux, 2006. Print.

“Wiesel’s Night Recalls the Holocaust, 1956” DISCovering World History. Online Detroit:

Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center – Junior. Gale. Aquinas High School. 10 Mar. 2014