Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania (later known as Romania) on September 30, 1928. Elie focused on Jewish religious studies before being relocated to Nazi death camps in WWII. Wiesel survived; he eventually began to write about his experiences in his memoir Night. He became an activist, orator and teacher. He spoke out against persecution and injustice. People should look at what Elie Wiesel and many other Jews went through just to be able to live in this world. The people living now should be appreciative of everything that is given and more. No one understands such a dreadful experience as the Holocaust without shifting in the way you were before. In Night, a memoir by Elie Wiesel, the author defines his suffering at the hands of Nazis. Taken with his family in 1944, they were directed to Auschwitz to come before the dishonorable selection. There, Elie parted from his mom and sister leaving him with his father who was too busy to spend any time with his son before the camp. Being under the Nazis' control, Elie and his father moved to several camps. The Nazi command “deprived Elie...of the desire to live..., which murdered his God and soul and turned my dreams to dust” (32). Preceding to the war, Elie lived an extremely spiritual and blameless life. Elie controlled a very strong curiosity in Jewish beliefs. At such a young age, Elie followed the Jewish faith with a vigor unusual for his age; his father kept him grounded in a world of reason. Even as Elie's freedoms vanished, he still maintained a sense of faith as a crutch. This also shows how Elie still was a child at the time, not aware that the Germans could try to eradicate an entire race. Ellie did not have an inkling of the horrors that lay before him and how they... ... middle of paper ... ...ce out of the camp he "Spent his days in a total idleness. And I had but one desire to eat. [He] no longer thought of his father or mother"(107). The war left him crushed for life without any attachments to reality or sympathy for his family; he had cried his last tears. Following the camp, Elie only existed as a body wanting basic necessities without a soul or passion. The Holocaust changed Elie from a religious child to a mindless body who lost all innocence at age when he "Was fifteen years old"(96). The flames of the furnaces and the noose on the necks of fellow prisoners stole that desire from him and all the prisoners leaving empty bodies to work for the Nazi regime. Such horrors forced any man to abandon his passions if he wished to survive to the next day. The effect the war had on the Jews makes the claims of Holocaust deniers incredibly ignorant and cruel.
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Show MoreIn 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.
In the beginning of the novel, Elie’s father Shlomo Wiesel is a respected Jewish community leader in Sighet. He was held in the highest esteem by the community and his advice and knowledge was frequently sought (Wiesel 22). Unfortunately, Shlomo Wiesel made the same mistake as other Jews, and decided to ignore the warnings about the Nazis. Before everything started, Elie even asked his father to sell everything and move to Palestine, but his father told him, “I am too old, my son, too old to start a new life. Too old to start from scratch in some distant land…”(Wiesel 27) . Soon after, the Nazis come into Sighet and formed two ghettos. While been in the smaller ghetto waiting to be moved, the Wiesel’s family former maid, Maria, offers to hide the family in her village, but once again Elie’s father declines the opportunity.
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.
Elie Wiesel, a Jewish boy, lives in Sighet during World War II with his mother, father, and two sisters, and he is very religious and wanted to study Judaism. However, there were warnings by some people that Jewish people were being deported and killed. Although no one believes these warnings, Elie and his family are taken to a ghetto where they have no food. After being in the ghetto Elie and his father are separated from Elie’s mother and sister because of selection and were placed in cattle cars where they had no room. They are taken to Auschwitz where they suffer from hunger, beatings, and humiliation from the guards which causes Elie’s father to become weak. By now Elie loses his faith in God because of all he has been through. Lastly, Elie’s father dies just before the Jews are liberated and Elie sees his reflection in the mirror but does not recognize himself because he looks like a skeleton.
Elie had to somehow move on with his life, a seemingly impossible task. After he became a free man it dawned on him that he had to speak for those who were silenced by this atrocity. He made it his life's mission to inform people of his story not for pity, but for prevention, “…that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” Elie made the best of a bad situation. As opposed to letting what happened to him resigned within him, he used it and opened up others and inform them. Elie later went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his brilliantly written memoirs of his experiences. He took the best of a bad situation. His circumstances pushed him to the limits. Instead of resenting the world and closing off, he used his knowledge to better mankind. Everyone is placed in dire circumstances at some point in time, some more difficult than others. Elie Weisel is an inspiration. Just like him we should never let the wrong doing of others break us, nd instead let them inspire
Elie is just a young boy whenever everything happens, and his faith in humanity is still quite strong. However, as time goes on, Elie is faced with an abundance of challenges and tasks that will test just how strong his faith is. Whenever Elie was young, he was curious about God and wanted to know more, causing him to soon meet Moshe the Beadle. Moshe was a strongly religious person and taught Elie almost everything he knew. In a way Moshe was Elie’s best friend. He lived a joyous life and loved all of the people surrounding him, until he disappeared with the Germans. All of the Jews believed that they were going to a “resort”, however, they were horifically wrong. The treatment they received from the Lagerkapo, was indescribably awful. Whenever Moshe was the only one to return and he was changed tremendously and kept screaming about how they were going to die and the Germans were going to hurt them, no one believed him and called Moshe crazy and felt pity for him. This was the first time that Elie’s faith in humanity was slightly tested. The first sign of no humanity that Elie noticed, was the first camp he was deported to, Birkenau, and saw young babies burning in a fire. Throughout the Holocaust, Elie loses all his faith that humans have potential. He believes they care more about their own survival than trying to help others. At this point, Elie has no faith in man and that the
An estimated 1/3 of all Jewish people who were alive were grotesquely tortured and murdered during the Holocaust. Those who were not murdered went through changes mentally, physically, and spiritually. This changed many people’s identities to where they seemed like a completely different person. Elie was one of the many people whose identity had changed throughout their time at the death camps.
He described himself in the first paragraph of his book Night. “I was twelve. I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.” He was a Jew dedicated to his religion, he loved God, he prayed a lot and his parents ran a shop, he had 3 sisters. Elie and his family lived in Siguet a small town in Transylvania and later on they were taken from his home to Auschwitz concentration camp and then to Buchenwald. Moshe the Beadle warned the Jews that the German police were killing the Jews but they didn’t listen to him. When all the Jews weren’t allowed to get out their house and the Germans were being friendly with them, the Jews had no clue what was going to happen to them and soon they were all obligated to wear the yellow star, little did they know it was a symbol of death and it meant that they were going to
The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel gives an in depth view of Nazi Concentration Camps. Growing up in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Wiesel, a young Jewish boy at the innocent age of 12, whose main focus in life was studying the Kabbalah and becoming closer in his relationship with God. In the memoir, Elie Wiesel reflects back to his stay within a Nazi Concentration Camp in hopes that by sharing his experiences, he could not only educate the world on the ugliness known as the Holocaust, but also to remind people that by remembering one atrocity, the next one can potentially be avoided. The holocaust was the persecution and murder of approximately six million Jew’s by Aldolf Hitler’s Nazi army between 1933 and 1945. Overall, the memoir shows
Elie has changed in many ways, but he had changed more through losing his faith with God, getting closer with his father, then having to lose him to death, and becoming a walking corpse. Hitler had costed him his religion, his father, and his health. With learning about the past, we, the citizens of today, can hopefully avoid having this horrible time in history recur and try to make better
...bers that he has a father and he forgot about him in the mob. “I knew he was running out of strength, close to death, and yet I had abandoned him” (p.106). Elie feels guilty for leaving his father when he needed Elie the most. After he wakes up he goes looking for his father. He feels as if he is responsible for taking care of his father. Elie replaces his faith with obligation to his father to help keep him going thought out the holocaust.
...ed Auschwitz, he was emotionally dead. The many traumatizing experiences he had been through affected Elie and his outlook on the world around him.
At the end of the memoir, Elie no longer recognizes himself as he has been mentally and physically changed by the Nazis and holocaust. Throughout the events of moving from camp to camp, losing loved ones, and witnessing the death of his people, Elie loses his insanity. The concentration camp had made a huge impact on him and has scarred him for life. He is no longer the same person he was when he first entered camp. After his father’s death, nothing in his life mattered anymore, but to stay alive. Once he was a free man, Elie doesn’t throw himself at the provisions to seek revenge. He goes seeking “only of bread”(115). Elie knows that even though everything is over, he still has to protect himself and keep himself alive. When Elie contemplates
The Holocaust caused a loss of innocence. Many children or young teens went in with innocence and if they survived, they came out will hardly any innocence. Elie learned that you can’t be nice all the time and that if you want something you actually have to fight for it. He learned that within this tragic event you can’t stay friendly and give someone a little bread because you feel sorry for them; you have to save everything for yourself and yourself only. Elie was innocent at one time, he never had to really fight for anything he wanted, he just got it if they had the money. But, after he was forced to the camp he had to fight for everything. He would see his own father get beat and not think anything of it. All of them had to be selfish
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