Elie Wiesel’s novel ‘Night’ is a tragic, deeply poignant and heart-wrenching autobiographical account of his life in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. A traumatized survivor of the Buchenwald camp, through this novel expresses his anguish about the brutal incarceration and genocide that took place there and in numerous other camps in Europe during Hitler’s rule. However, what Elie Wiesel attributes as one of the main factors that allowed the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to continue their operations unabatedly was the all pervasive ‘silence’ which they encountered during their assault on the Jewish community. The author himself lived with the knowledge of these crimes against humanity in anguish and silence for …show more content…
‘Silence’ is the predominant theme that the author emphasizes and intertwines with the narration of the events that occurred, and it echoes throughout the novel ‘Night.’ Both Wiesel and the other Jewish victims suffered their traumatic ordeals in silence; no voice anywhere in the world initially rebelled against the perpetrators of these abhorrent crimes; the author expresses guilt over his own initial silence, the silence of the Jewish victims who suffered, and the silent indifference of the rest of the world, and finally, the unimaginable and unbearable silence of God, the ‘protector’ of his followers, in the most inhumane slaughter of mankind in …show more content…
The Nazis wanted to Wiesel’s aim on the other hand as a survivor, was to force himself to break his silence and to recall the painful memories, in order to chronicle its brutalities for the world to read. By doing so, he would break that evil ‘silence’ depicted in the novel ‘Night’ and he would be one of the first voices representing the cries of the victims and honoring their last wishes. Furthermore, most importantly, this would result in denying Hitler and the Nazis a posthumous victory as well as forewarn and protect future generations from such evil recurring in the
In the 1930s-1940s, the Nazis took millions of Jews into their death camps. They exterminated children, families, and even babies. Elie Wiesel was one of the few who managed to live through the war. However, his life was forever scarred by things he witnessed in these camps. The book Night explained many of the harsh feelings that Elie Wiesel experienced in his time in various German concentration camps.
The book, Night, by Eliezer (Elie) Wiesel, entails the story of his childhood in Nazi concentration camps all around Europe. Around the middle of the 20th century in the early 1940s, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army traveled around Europe in an effort to exterminate the Jewish population. As they went to through different countries in order to enforce this policy, Nazi officers sent every Jewish person they found to a concentration camp. Often called death camps, the main purpose was to dispose of people through intense work hours and terrible living conditions. Wiesel writes about his journey from a normal, happy life to a horrifying environment surrounded by death in the Nazi concentration camps. Night is an amazingly
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
Night by Elie Wiesel was a memoir on one of the worst things to happen in human history, the Holocaust. A terrible time where the Nazi German empire started to take control of eastern Europe during WWII. This book tells of the terrible things that happened to the many Jewish people of that time. This time could easily change grown men, and just as easily a boy of 13. Elie’s relationship with God and his father have been changed forever thanks to the many atrocities committed at that time.
In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel remembers his time at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Elie begins to lose his faith in God after his faith is tested many times while at the concentration camp. Elie conveys to us how horrific events have changed the way he looks at his faith and God. Through comments such as, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God, my soul, and turned my dreams into dust,” he reveals the toll that the Holocaust has taken on him. The novel begins during the years of 1942-1944 in Sighet, Transylvannia, Romania. Elie Wiesel and his family are deported and Elie is forced to live through many horrific events. Several events such as deportation, seeing dead bodies while at Auschwitz, and separation from his mother and sisters, make Elie start to question his absolute faith in God.
...istory, while at the same time provides a sense of remembrance and seminal value, as well as understanding of the true events that took place during the holocaust. Wiesel subconsciously uses the theme of witnesses in his book Night, which demonstrates the daily struggles and harsh environment experienced by those who were trapped at the camps. Although the book only accounts for one person’s experience, all of the others who suffered are in a way intertwined. Although on the broad spectrum millions have been affected by the holocaust, Elizer’s narration accounts for each of them, showing they had their own story, their own life they left behind, their own conflicts, both internally and with the Nazis. Night, by Elie Wiesel encompasses the will to survive, the witnessing of historical events, the personal accounts of those affected, and remembrance of the holocaust.
Elie Wiesel has gone through more in life than any of us could ever imagine. One of my favorite quotes from him says, “To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.” In his novel “Night” we are given an in-depth look at the pure evil that was experienced during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. We see as Wiesel goes from a faithful, kind Jewish boy to a survivor. As he experiences these events they change him drastically. We first see a boy with a feeling of hope and ignorance as his hometown is occupied and he’s moved into the ghettos. Then as he’s transferred to a concentration camp he questions his faith and slowly loses a sense of who he once was. But all of this puts him in an important position, he knows that he must share with the world what
Inked on the pages of Elie Wiesel’s Night is the recounting of him, a young Jewish boy, living through the mass genocide that was the Holocaust. The words written so eloquently are full of raw emotions depict his journey from a simple Jewish boy to a man who was forced to see the horrors of the world. Within this time period, between beatings and deaths, Wiesel finds himself questioning his all loving and powerful God. If his God loved His people, then why would He allow such a terrible thing to happen? Perhaps Wiesel felt abandoned by his God, helpless against the will of the Nazis as they took everything from him.
The resistance of the Holocaust has claimed worldwide fame at a certain point in history, but the evidence that the evil-doers themselves left crush everything that verifies the fantasy of the Holocaust. For an example, in Poland, the total Jewish population of over thirty-three hundred thousand suddenly plummeted to three hundred thousand. Ten percent of the population survived the Holocaust in Poland. Almost every country that the Nazis have conquered has the same percent of survival as Poland. In Elie Wiesel Wiesel’s memoir Night, the activities in the concentration camps, the suffering of Jews, and the disbelief of the inhumane actions of the Nazis result in making people resist the truth.
Authors sometimes refer to their past experiences to help cope with the exposure to these traumatic events. In his novel Night, Elie Wiesel recalls the devastating and horrendous events of the Holocaust, one of the world’s highest points for man’s inhumanity towards man, brutality, and cruel treatment, specifically towards the Jewish Religion. His account takes place from 1944-1945 in Germany while beginning at the height of the Holocaust and ending with the last years of World War II. The reader will discover through this novel that cruelty is exemplified all throughout Wiesel's, along with the other nine million Jews’, experiences in the inhumane concentration camps that are sometimes referred to as “death factories.”
Night by Elie Wiesel is an autobiographical novel recording Mr. Wiesel’s experiences during the World War II holocaust. As a 15 year old boy Elie was torn from his home and placed in a concentration camp. He and his father were separated from his mother and his sisters. It is believed that they were put to death in the fiery pits of Auschwitz. The entire story is one of calm historical significance while there is a slight separation between the emotional trauma of what are occurring, and the often-detached voice of the author.
...sel about ten years to write Night and he believes he has a moral obligation to, “ try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory” (viii). Wiesel is a mentally strong person because for most Holocaust survivors retelling is reliving. In Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, he seems to have come out of “night” and have faith in God, “ But I have faith. Faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and even in His creation” (120). At the end of the book, Wiesel gathers enough strength to look at himself through a mirror, ”From the depths of a mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes has never left me” (115). Although inside he is alive, from what he sees in the mirror, he is dead. It is our responsibility to stop an event of this magnitude from ever occurring again.
In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he recounts his horrifying experiences as a Jewish boy under Nazi control. His words are strong and his message clear. Wiesel uses themes such as hunger and death to vividly display his days during World War II. Wiesel’s main purpose is to describe to the reader the horrifying scenes and feelings he suffered through as a repressed Jew. His tone and diction are powerful for this subject and envelope the reader. Young readers today find the actions of Nazis almost unimaginable. This book more than sufficiently portrays the era in the words of a victim himself.
Upon analysis of Night, Elie Wiesel’s use of characterization and conflict in the memoir helps to illustrate how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lives changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before the German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4).