The Holocaust is known as the largest and most vicious genocide known to human history. Not only was it a racial onslaught on Jews it also caused a total of 60 million causalities. 6 million of them were Jews. Elie Wiesel, one of the few holocaust survivors, awakens the truth behind the Nazi death camps with his memoir, Night. In his story, Wiesel accounts all of the camp horrors into the young boy Eliezer. The atrocities of the camps turn Eliezer from a faithful and innocent young boy to a witness of the death of his innocence, faith, and family. Moshe the Beadle is the first character to be introduced in the book. Even though Moshe disappears after the first few pages into the book, his ideas resonate throughout the entire story. First …show more content…
This is the time when Eliezer was really close to losing his faith in his God. During the first hanging of the Warsaw Youth, the prisoners showed no pity. They thought it was a fair punishment and honored the youth in a robotic and emotionless way. On the other hand when the pipel is hanged for suspected sabotage the crowd blows up in misery. They were all remorseful and questioning how God is still quiet after seeing this barbaric act. In one of the book’s most famous passages, Elie states that “Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live,” Elie finds it disturbing about the idea of God’s silence. He wonders how the all-powerful god can allow such horror and cruelty when the people devote their entire lives worshipping. This is when he notices that God is actually dead. The existence of knowing that God had the lack of divine responsibility shakes Eliezer into almost losing his faith with the hangings. Eliezer in that period did not question about God he actually found the answers to …show more content…
The first encounter is in Buna, where Eliezer’s foot is painfully swollen. During his stay in the camps, Eliezer only thought was survival. In his stay in Buna though, his goal to stay alive was further strengthened, causing him to only think about food and nothing else. When he was injued, Eliezer panicked. He was clueless about what to do until a doctor told him he needed surgery. After being sent to the hospital, Eliezer was keen on staying alive. He keeps on asking the doctor if he was going to stay alive after the surgery. The reassurance from the doctor calmed Eliezer but Eliezer still was looking out for his only survival. The second encounter was in Buchenwald. In his thoughts he stated, “One day I was able to get up after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.” His mindset shows that through all the hardships that Eliezer has gone thorough, all the pain and sorrows that he needed to face, he has finally given up. Traversing through the entire story, Eliezer still had that small spark of faith inside of him. He still believed in his god despite of all the circumstances. Eliezer still believed that somehow God will still stay and help him despite how small his faith was diminished to. At the end of the story, Eliezer has lost
Eliezer and his father got separated from his mother and younger sisters. For months in the concentration camps, Eliezer witnessed inhumane doings that scarred him for the rest of his life. He was forced to work at Buna, a factory, and run on a daily basis to keep himself alive. He became malnourished because of the unappetizing food that they served. He and other Jews were punished and beaten for no reason.
Eliezers family is one of the last Jewish families to leave Sighet. When Eliezer and his family are packed into train cars is really the first time where Eliezer begins to question his god. ” Where is God? Where is he?”
Both Eliezer and his dad were sent to the workforce, where they tried to keep their health up so that they can continue working and not be killed. This task was very difficult because they were challenged with starvation, thirst and even abuse from the Germans. Eliezer’s father got ill and a few months before the British and Americans closed in on Germany his father died. Eliezer was now known as a concentration camp survivor one of the few but was never the same. He suffered with flashbacks and was still haunted by the violence, deaths, and cruelty he was exposed to during what is known now as the
As the story unfolds, it becomes a prominent theme that difficult situations bring a loss a faith, identity, and character. Eliezer is faced with many strenuous obstacles, and it reveals the truth in his faith. The narrator hears a man yell out, “‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here he is-- He is hanging here on this gallows…’
Eliezer Wiesel changes during the Holocaust, physically, emotionally and morally. Wiesel changes, but; “Changing isn't a bad thing, it never was. But at the end of the day, you know, you’re the same person. And, where your heart is. That doesn't change.
His faith is grounded in the idea that God is everywhere, all the time, that his divinity touches every aspect of his daily life. Since God is good his studies teach him, and God is everywhere in the world, the world must therefore be good. Eliezer’s faith in the goodness of the world is irreparably shaken, however, by the cruelty and evil he witnesses during the Holocaust. He cannot imagine that the concentration camps’ unbelievable, disgusting cruelty could possibly reflect divinity. He wonders how a benevolent God could be part of such hatred and how God could permit such cruelty to take place.
#2 At the end of Night, Wiesel writes: “”From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” What parts of Eliezer died during his captivity? What was born in their
When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased them from paradise… But look at these men whom You have betrayed, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!,” (pg.68) because of all the horrors and mistreatment Elie has endured, like witnessing infants being thrown into the trenches, “... Children thrown into the flames,” (pg.32), and watching his father being slapped, “... he slapped my father with such force that he fell down and then crawled back to his place on all fours,” (pg.39), his faith is distinguished. This contrasts to the beginning of the book where Eliezer says he cannot imagine a world without God, “Why do I pray?
Eliezer has to learn how to adapt to not having as food as he used to, being beaten for no reason, and watching daily hangings. Eliezer specifically remembers one particular hanging of a young boy, a pipel, whose master has been gathered arms for the resistance. Eliezer said “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… ” Eliezer remembers how the child cried and remained alive for the next half an hour, before his body finally gives out and the child dies. Towards the end of the book, as the group that Eliezer and his father are in keeps running around Germany, and Eliezer has a choice to give up and die on the side of a road, but he continues to run because of his father. Eliezer says “My father’s presence was the only thing that stopped me.
The memoir written by Elie Wiesel, Night, is illustrating the Holocaust, the even which caused the death of over 6 million Jews. Auschwitz, the concentration camps, is responsible for over 1 million of the deaths. In the memoir Night, Wiesel uses the symbolism of fire, and silence to clearly communicate to the readers that the Holocaust was a catastrophic and calamitous event, and that children should never be involved in warfare. Elie Wiesel enters Auschwitz at the age of 15, and witnesses’ horrific events as a prisoner in Auschwitz, including the deaths of numerous children, and the beating and death of his own father. All these inhumane things were done just because Adolf Hitler wanted to cleanse the German society of the Jews.
It is estimated that 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel somehow managed to beat those odds. Sadly there was no one there to save Elie, the protagonist of Night, from the misery and distress that he would experience as he went through the Holocaust. He survived harsh beatings, sickness, hunger, thirst, dysentery, and all the other forms of death that plagued his environment. All this would not come without a toll on who Elie was as a character, causing him to undergo a dynamic change.
As time progresses, he becomes confined to his bed and cannot move. Eliezer brings him soup and coffee, but at the same time he regrets it and thinks to himself how he should leave his father and conserve his strength. The other prisoners beat his father and steal his food. His father had dysentery so he is always thirsty, but it is dangerous to give it to him. Eliezer tries to get medical aid, but the doctors will not help him because he is an old man.
Eliezer and his father rely on one another to survive through the Holocaust. Together they encounter the cruelty of the Nazis, the lack of compassion from the prisoners, as well as the difficulty of simply surviving. They remain strong together unlike other father-son relationships seen in the novel. A majority of the prisoners gravitate towards self preservation while Eliezer chooses to remain with his father. Eliezer does exhibit ambivalence in continuing to help his father because the conditions of the Holocaust continually make it harder to make others a priority than oneself.
It is a common assumption among numerous people in the world that the Holocaust never existed. In fact, almost fifty percent of the world population never even heard of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel helped people around the world learn about the Holocaust through his book “Night.” He wanted people to see the bravery, courage, and guilt of the Jews through his book. “Night” shows the horrific and malicious acts in the German concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Night by Elie Wiesel shows when humans are put in horrible situations, the acts of selfishness greatly increase. The book shows that when humans are in crisis like the Holocaust everyone is desperate to survive, so they will do anything they can to get their basic needs. The people forgot who they are as human, and how it made Elie and others act differently towards each other. Elie Wiesel, and everyone who he meets along the way want to survive this, at times they forget why they want to live. But no one wants to get defeated by the Germans.