A Truism In Elie Wiesel's 'Night'

Night Essay Response

A truism is an accepted truth about life in general. Something so simple that there is no reason to argue about it. Many of these truisms were written by great people. An example of this is Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel was a child during the holocaust, and in his book Night Elie Wiesel recounts the horrors that he experienced during his childhood. A truism that I believe that Elie Wiesel would agree with is that "to touch a sore renews the pain". Elie Wiesel lost his childhood when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Soon his village was transformed into one of hundreds of other ghettos. These worked as temporary prisons before the Jews were moved to their final destination; the death camps. The most well known

One such child beat his father for not making his bed correctly. However the servant to a Dutchman was not like this at all. He was loved by all and, "He had the face of a sad angel."( Wiesel 42). However, when the power station that the child worked at blew up, he was tortured for information. But the child refused to speak and because of this was sentenced to death by hanging. Years later in an interview, Elie Wiesel spoke about what he was forced to witness that day. As he told Bob Costas, "I remember it well, I remember it now. I didn 't forget a single instant, a single episode."( Wiesel 87). The death of not only this child but thousands of others took their toll on Elie Wiesel. As he stated in his interview, "When I see a child, I go to pieces. Any child."( Wiesel

When they were finally given the chance to rest, the prisoners would collapse on top of each other. Some were dead and the rest were barely clinging on to life. This is where Elie Wiesel found himself. Buried under corpses, surrounded by both the living and the dead, although there wasn 't much difference between them. Here Elie Wiesel encountered an old friend named Juliek. Juliek played the violin beautifully, and on that dark night he gave his final concert when he played a fragment of Beethoven 's concerto for a audience of corpses. Elie Wiesel wrote in his book, "To this day, whenever I hear Beethoven played my eyes close and out of the dark rises the sad, pale face of my polish friend, as he said farewell on his violin to an audience of dying men."( Wiesel 64). When Elie Wiesel awoke in the morning he found his friend 's body. Juliek was dead, and lying next to him was his smashed violin. Years later when asked about Juliek , Elie Wiesel revealed, "You know, I used to play the violin before. I played well. And I haven 't touched the violin since because of that." ( Wiesel