According to Rudolf Reder, one of only two Jews to survive the camp at Belzec, Poland, he describes the circumstance during his time at the prison camp, “The brute Schmidt was our guard; he beat and kicked us if he thought we were not working fast enough. He ordered his victim to lie down and gave them 25 lashes with a whip, ordering them to count out loud. If the victim made a mistake, he was given 50 lashes….Thirty or 40 of us were shot every day….” This quotation shows the SS guards treat the Jews inhumanly. As these Jews acclimate to the situation, their primitive survival instincts become stronger over time. They put their lives as their first priority and will do anything to survive. However, in the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer Shlomo the protagonist adversely demonstrates more commitment to family than to himself in the concentration camps. Before World War II, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party gain popularity by promising to make Germany a rich and powerful nation again after their defeat in World War I. The Nazis publicly blame the Jews for Germany’s loss of World War I and the Great Depression, resulting in promoting the anti-Semitism. Although he admits to the power of the instinct for self-preservation, because of his commitment to his father throughout the prison camp experience, and because of his reactions to others sons who do abandon or turn on their fathers, Wiesel apparently favors commitment to family over commitment to self-preservation. Eliezer never attempts to show commitment to family until the deportation to Birkenau.
From the beginning of the memoir, after their arrival at Birkenau, Eliezer Shlomo endeavors to show commitment to his father. For example, after Eliezer sees him an old man falling o...
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...cold and needs to have an operation fast to deter his foot from being amputated. Eliezer then finds out that the hospital is a much more bearable place to settle in because there is no work and better foods are served to the patients. Despite the fact that Eliezer has pain on himself, he will infrequently send a bit of bread to his father. This shows Eliezer’s commitment to his father because he worries about his father’s hunger and loss of strength. The SS guards only serve a ration of bread and thick soup to those Jews who work outside. These modicum amounts of food will not last the Jews for a long time, though, and they will end up losing their strength. Once a while, Dr. Mengele will call all the Jews to congregate and announce a selection will take place. The selected Jews will execute themselves in the gas chambers. Besides, dysentery is common for the Jews.
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
When asked by Moshe the Beadle the reason why he prayed, Eliezer could not come up with an answer. Even before being deported to concentration camp, Eliezer still prayed. Things begin to change when Eliezer arrives at concentration camp in Auschwitz. After witnessing the incineration of small children, Eliezer expresses deep resentment towards God for remaining silent and allowing this to happen.
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.
About halfway through his imprisonment, Eliezer had gotten accustomed to life in a concentration camp. Despite the magnitude of death in every camp Elie was held hostage, nothing was worse than when three people were hanged in front of his eyes. The people were convicted suspiciously without confirmation of their crime; the youngest of which was about a twelve year old boy who was an assistant to one of the Nazi Kapos. After this experience, Wiesel writes, “That night, the soup tasted of corpses.” (65). The author incorporates a metaphor for his feelings and related it to the soup Eliezer was given; the soup did not literally taste like corpses, but this was how he felt because of all the death. The symbolism of his soup tasting like corpses relates to how death was surrounding Wiesel at the camp, and it also represents how he has lost faith in God. There were many places throughout the book in which Elie experiences things that make him question his faith, none more than when he thought there would be no chance of his
Due to the cruel punishment Elie endures from the Nazi Army and other prisoners that he comes
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
Throughout the Nobel Peace Prize award winner Night, a common theme is established around dehumanization. Elie Wiesel, the author, writes of his self-account within the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. Being notoriously famed for its unethical methods of punishment, and the concept of laboring Jews in order to follow a regime, was disgusting for the wide public due to the psychotic ideology behind the concept. In the Autobiography we are introduced to Wiesel who is a twelve year old child who formerly lived in the small village of Sighet, Romania. Wiesel and his family are taken by the Nazi aggressors to the Concentration camp Auschwitz were they are treated like dogs by the guards. Throughout the Autobiography the guards use their authoritative
...nd the doctor refused to help him because there was nothing he could do. He started to hallucinate and the others made fun of him. Did they not realize they suffer the same fate as him? When Eliezer woke, his father was no longer there. Possibly taken to the crematorium, all Eliezer could think was that he was free at last. What happened to not wanting to be separated from his father? He had become selfish and it is now hard to feel sympathy for him.
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 were 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 has lost his faith in God because of all he has been through.
The Holocaust will forever be known as one of the largest genocides ever recorded in history. 11 million perished, and 6 million of the departed were Jewish. The concentration camps where the prisoners were held were considered to be the closest one could get to a living hell. There is no surprise that the men, women, and children there were afraid. One was considered blessed to have a family member alongside oneself. Elie Wiesel was considered to be one of those men, for he had his father working side by side with him. In the memoir Night, by Elie Wiesel, a young boy and his father were condemned to a concentration camp located in Poland. In the concentration camps, having family members along can be a great blessing, but also a burden. Elie Wiesel shows that the relationship with his father was the strength that kept the young boy alive, but was also the major weakness.
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.”
Eliezer’s dad was so occupied with the Jewish community and wasn’t really involved with his family. Once they are separated from their family at selection, they realize that all they have are each other. Toward the end of the memoir when Eliezer’s dad becomes ill people question him because he’s sharing his rations and well as attending to his very ill father. Telling him to take his father’s rations and let him die. Eliezer doesn’t listen and continues to tend to his father because of how they came together. He knew that if he let his father die there would be nothing else to live for. When Eliezer father dies at the end, Eliezer says something that shows how much his father meant to him. He says, “I remained in Buchenwald until April 11. I shall not describe my life during that period. It no longer mattered. Since my father’s death, nothing mattered to me anymore.” (pg. 113, night) I would have done the same. I would have done everything I could to help my father survive. I think the reason that Eliezer held on to his father for so long, knowing that his days were numbered, was because his dad was the last piece of family that he had. Shiomo was the last person in his life that was connected to him from his childhood. I believe that part of Eliezer died when his father died. That’s the person he fought with. That’s the reason to he kept on going in the dangerous
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.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, is an account about his experience through concentration camps and death marches during WWII. In 1944, fifteen year old Wiesel was one of the many Jews forced onto cattle cars and sent to death and labor camps. Their personal rights were taken from them, as they were treated like animals. Millions of men, women, children, Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, disabled people, and Slavic people had to face the horrors the Nazi’s had planned for them. Many people witnessed and lived through beatings, murders, and humiliations. Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish
Elie Wiesel writes about his personal experience of the Holocaust in his memoir, Night. He is a Jewish man who is sent to a concentration camp, controlled by an infamous dictator, Hitler. Elie is stripped away everything that belongs to him. All that he has worked for in his life is taken away from him instantly. He is even separated from his mother and sister. On the other side of this he is fortunate to survive and tell his story. He describes the immense cruel treatment that he receives from the Nazis. Even after all of the brutal treatment and atrocities he experiences he does not hate the world and everything in it, along with not becoming a brute.