The Holocaust, was a time period from 1933-1945, in which primarily Jews and other groups were imprisoned and exterminated by Nazi Germany. With the ascendance of Adolf Hitler in 1933, most Jews who did not flee Germany were sent to concentration camps. When World War II started, Hitler declared that all Jews in his conquered nations were to be exterminated. By the end of the war, 6 million Jews had been killed, along with Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, the disabled, and others. Night by Elie Wiesel, starts out in Elie’s hometown of Sighet, Romania.
Eliezer is a teenage boy living in the Hungarian town of Sighet, Romania. His father is a well respected in the community. Eliezer is a student of Talmud, Jewish oral law and also Cabbala, Jewish mysticism. Eliezer is also very religious since he is an Orthodox Jew. It is 1941 and Sighet is one of the last untouched Jewish communities left in Europe. The first act of anti-Semitism was the deportation of all foreign Jews, including Eliezer’s teacher, Moshe the Beadle. Moshe soon comes back to warn Sighet, that German officials intercepted the train carrying Jews out of Hungary. The Jews were forced to dig graves and ended up being shot and thrown into them. No one believed him, thinking he was mad, including Eliezer. By the spring of 1944, the fascists take control of the Hungarian government and Hungarian capital, Budapest, yet the people of Sighet ignore this. When the Germans arrive in Sighet, they force all Jews to live in ghettos and wear yellow stars. Eventually all the Jews are put on trains bound for Birkenau, leaving all their possessions and lives behind. Being the last family to leave for Birkenau, Martha, former servant of Elizier’s family offers to hide them in her village, but their foolish optimism rejects her offer.
At the first concentration camp Birkenau, Eliezer is separated from his mother and sister, but stays with his father, in which he is very happy about. However they are still uncertain as whether they will be sent to labor camps or cremated. As they moved through Birkenau, they see babies thrown into cremation pits, with a separate pit for adults. Eliezer cannot believe what is happening, and his father cries. After being processed at Birkenau, the prisoners are sent to Auschwitz, where they are tattooed with their prison numbers and stay here for several weeks before being transferred again to Buna.
Eliezer later went to other concentration camps in Bakenau and Buna. During these years in the camps he lived through great suffering. Starvation, and survival. He also witnesses thousands of people die and murdered including his own father. Eliezer was finally shipped to Buchenwald. Which would end up being his last stay at any concentration camp. It was now the year 1945 and this ordeal was finally over.
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.
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.
During the marches between camps some of these broken souls would drop to the side of the road where they were shot and killed by a Nazi guard. Eliezer saw others do this, and soon he was thinking of joining
In his first account in the story, he is a young boy of 13 years, in the small town of Sighet, Transylvania; In Hungary. He is very religious and is ready to learn more about his faith. It is 1941, when some Jews are taken from Sighet. Years pass until Elie is 15 years old now; Hitler is hovering above European Jewish citizens with a iron fist. With the laws passed in Germany, the Holocaust begins, and The Germans invade foreign land in an attempt to purify the Aryan race. Germans appear in Sighet, and are polite and kind and take residence in multiple families homes. Slowly overtime Jews were labeled, then segregated into ghettos. Soon after Elie and his family learns of the transports to the labor camps. They are then transported; through this misfortune and grief, Elie loses his faith in god, and loses hope. This is where the story truly begins, in the labor camp of Birkenau. Elie and his father were stripped of all their possessions and given painful haircuts, as well as clothes equivalent by those of rags; Here the people are worked like dogs and Elie now endures the pain of the labor camps, both emotionally and physically. He loses sight of his mother and sister who are
Eliezer was very religious but his father was very unsentimental and didn’t support him in his beliefs. When rumors started to arouse, he begged his father to leave, but he wouldn’t. Once the curtain finally rose, it was too late for the Jews. They were kept in ghettos until they were to be transported. They had to pack up their things and then were sent to the smaller ghetto. Now they are in the cattle cars, waiting for their departure.
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.
Elie and his father are separated from Elie’s mother and little sister, never to be seen again. Elie comes face to face with the Angel of Death as he is marched to the edge of a crematory, but is put in a barracks instead. Elie’s faith briefly faltered at this moment. They are forced to strip down, but to keep their belt and shoes. They run to the barber and get their hair clipped off and any body hair shaved. Many of the Jews rejoice to see the others that have made it. Others weep for the ones lost. They then get prison clothes that were ridiculously fitted. They made exchanges and went to a new barracks in the “gypsies’ camp.” They wait in the mud for a long time. They were permitted to another barracks, with a gypsy in charge of them. They are ...
After a brief stay at Auschwitz, they are moved to a new camp, Buna. At Buna, Elie goes through the dehumanizing process of the concentration camps. Both he and his father experience severe beatings at the hand of the kapos. All the prisoners are overworked and undernourished. Many lose faith in God, including Elie. He witnesses several hangings, one of a boy with an angelic face, and sees him struggle for over thirty minutes fighting for his life. To a stranger's cry of "Where is God now?", Elie answers: "He is hanging here on this gallows...." (p. 62). As Elie witnesses the hanging of the young pipel, he feels that it is his God who is hanging on the gallows. Elie i...
Eliezer’s horrible experiences at Auschwitz left him caught up in his sorrows and anger toward God. His loss of faith in God arises at Auschwitz. He doubts arise when he first sees the furnace pits in which the Nazis are burning babies. This horrifying experience ...
Elie goes to Auschwitz at an innocent, young stage in his life. Due to his experiences at this concentration camp, he loses his faith, his bond with his father, and his innocence. Situations as horrendous as the Holocaust will drastically change people, no matter what they were like before the event, and this is evident with Elie's enormous change throughout the memoir Night.
Elie and his family were sent a to concentration camp. There, in a camp called Auschwitz, Elie is separated from his mother and younger sister, but still remains with his father. Gerda was sent to the camps with no one but herself because she was separated from her family. All Gerda had to worry about was herself. While Elie always had to look after his father, which at times he felt as his father was a burden to
Upon entering the concentration camps, Eliezer and his father demonstrate a normal father and son relationship. In a normal father son relation, the father protects and gives advice to the son, and the son is dependent and reliant on the father. Eliezer and his father demonstrate this relationship to extremes throughout the beginning of their time in the camp. Eliezer reveals his childlike dependency upon entering the camp. Eliezer displays this dependency during first selection by stating, “The baton pointed to the left. I first wanted to see where they would send my father. Were he to have gone to the right, I would have run after him (Night 26-32) ” . Eliezer’s determination to stay with his father was constantly present. Eliezer reflects on a time in the camp which is all that he could think about was not to lose his father in the camp. Eliezer also requires his father’s protection during their stay in the concentration camps. Unintentionally demanding this protection, Eliezer remembers, “I kept walking, my father holding my hand” (Night 29). Eliezer continues to show his need for his father’s presence. Eliezer’s actions and thoughts reflect his
Why did Elie let it happen? What could Elie really have done as an alternative to save his father from dying? He could not have helped his father from being beaten up by the SS guards but he did try to help him from being attacked by his own men in his sleeping barracks. Elie really wanted his father to live. Elie does everything possible to help his father unless it would do harm to himself.
When Eliezer and his father, Chlomo, arrived at their first concentration camp, Eliezer was in an emotional agony. He considers running to the electrical wire to escape the "slow agony in the flames." His father replies by weeping and reciting the prayer of the dead. "May His Name be blessed and magnified" This tests Eliezer’s faith for the first time. "Why should I bless His name...what had I to thank Him for," he said...