Every day, people are denied basic necessary human rights. One well known event that striped millions of these rights was the Holocaust, recounted in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night. As a result of the atrocities that occur all around the world, organizations have published declarations such as the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. It is vital that the entitlement to all rights and freedoms without distinction of any kind, freedom of thought and religion, and the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of themselves be guaranteed to everyone, as these three rights are crucial to the survival of all people and their identity. Access to all rights and freedoms without distinction is vital because everyone is different …show more content…
The Nazi party’s main goal was to exterminate all Jewish people, first from Germany and then from the world. In the preface for the latest version of Night, Wiesel writes, “It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.” (Wiesel, viii). When Hitler set out to exterminate an entire group of people, he wasn’t just killing bodies but also killing their culture and therefore their souls. Without this culture people may feel as though they have nothing, as though life isn’t worth living. Throughout Night, Elie himself struggles to understand his views towards his own religious beliefs. Shortly after arriving in his first concentration camps Elie thinks, “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.” (Wiesel, 34). Elie’s persecution for his religious beliefs caused the loss of a fundamental pillar of his identity. This left him feeling as though the basis of his whole life may not be legitimate and that his God is not there for him. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 made an annual report of religious observance in 192 countries mandatory. During one report it was noted that “a Saudi teacher …show more content…
When Elie learns that the dentist has been murdered and his gold crown is safe for another day, his thoughts immediately turn to the possibility that he can trade the gold for food. "The bread, the soup - those were my whole life. I was nothing but a body. Perhaps even less: a famished stomach. The stomach alone was measuring time." (Wiesel, 52). As the conditions Elie was subjected to start to take a toll on his body, he becomes less human and more animal. Without basic necessities it was impossible for him to be concerned with maintaining a positive mindset, all that mattered was having a surviving body, not necessarily a surviving soul. When German enemies bombed a nearby area, the concentration camp went on lock down. Two cauldrons of hot soup were left unattended, easily in view of all the prisoners. Elie recounts the event, saying “poor hero committing suicide for a ration or two or more of soup…” (Wiesel, 59). Although everyone knew that the man would be shot for leaving his block, hunger and primal instincts led him to abandon all rational. First and foremost, humans are animals, and animals want to survive. When most freedoms are taken away the focus shifts back to these animalist rationales and we abandon the part of us that makes us human. Once the camp has been liberated, Elie
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. Prior to being taken, it is known that Wiesel was very strong in his beliefs of God and the ideas behind the Jewish religion. However, he questioned God while he endured the torture that the Nazis inflicted on many different races. He questioned why God had done this to these innocent people. Elie Wiesel lost much of his faith while in the
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
“Here, you must work. If you don’t you will go straight to the chimney. To the crematorium. Work or crematorium--the choice is yours.” (38-39) Elie chose not to die and to not give up. He had to work to stay alive. Elie worked so hard his foot became numb from the snow and was sent to the infirmary. He has an operation on his foot that would help in the long run working in the concentration camp. “Two days after my operation, rumors swept through the camp that the battlefront had suddenly drawn nearer. The Red Army was racing toward Buna; it was only a matter of hours.” (80) When Elie heard the news that he could be relieved. He made the choice to leave, later finding out the infirmary was liberated. Returning to the block, his foot reopened and was bleeding, the snow under his foot was turning red.
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.
In the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, the author displays the transformation and the evolution of the average human being, through a horrible experience that he personally went through. When he is transported from one place to another, forced to leave everything behind, to go live in the ghettos, then in a horrible concentration camp. In the concentration camp, Elie experiences numerous events that challenge his physical and mental limits. Some of these events made him question his faith, and whether there is such a thing as God, turning him from a conservative Jew to a reform Jew. Elie doesn’t love the concentration camps, yet he doesn’t hate it, in fact he does not care anymore.
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.
When a person's faith is also an alternative for their culture and morals, it proves challenging to take that sense of security in that faith away from them. In Night, Elie Wiesel, a Jewish student living in Sighet, Transylvania during the war of 1942, uses his studies in Talmud and the Kabbalah as not only a religious practice but a lifestyle. Elie and his fellow civilians are warned, however, by his Kabbalah teacher who says that during the war, German aggressors are aggregately imprisoning, deporting, and annihilating millions of Jews. When Elie and his family are victim of this aggression, Elie realizes how crucial his faith in God is if he is to survive the Holocaust. He vows after being separated from his mother and sisters that he will protect he and his father from death, even though as death nears, Elie gradually becomes closer to losing his faith. In the end, to Elie's devastation, Elie makes it out of the Holocaust alone after his father dies from the intense seclusion to malnutrition and deprivation. Elie survives the Holocaust through a battle of conscience--first by believing in God, then resisting his faith in God, and ultimately replacing his faith with obligation to his father.
The word “night” can be defined literally as ten hours of a 24-hour day that is dark, or metaphorically connoted as a time of evil and sadness. In the memoir Night, composed by Elie Wiesel, readers learn about a negative correlation to the period of time when light no longer appears. Wiesel leaves “a legacy of words” (vii) to ensure the past will never occur again. He explains the story without emoting and describes the events experienced by hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust. Night is a metaphor which refers to the darkness in lives, minds, and souls, and symbolizes lost hope, isolation, and transformation.
During the Holocaust many people were severely tortured and murdered. The holocaust caused the death of six million Jewish people, as well as the death of 5 million non-Jewish people. All of the people, who died during this time, died because of the Nazis’: a large hate group composed of extremely Ignoble, licentious, and rapacious people. They caused the prisoners to suffer physically and mentally; thus, causing them to lose all hope of ever being rescued. In the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, Elie went through so much depression, and it caused him to struggle with surviving everyday life in a concentration camp. While Elie stayed in the concentration camp, he saw so many people get executed, abused, and even tortured. Eventually, Elie lost all hope of surviving, but he still managed to survive. This novel is a perfect example of hopelessness: it does not offer any hope. There are so many pieces of evidence that support this claim throughout the entire novel. First of all, many people lost everything that had value in their life; many people lost the faith in their own religion; and the tone of the story is very depressing.
As humans, we require basic necessities, such as food, water, and shelter to survive. But we also need a reason to live. The reason could be the thought of a person, achieving some goal, or a connection with a higher being. Humans need something that drives them to stay alive. This becomes more evident when people are placed in horrific situations. In Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, he reminisces about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust. There the men witness horrific scenes of violence and death. As time goes on they begin to lose hope in the very things that keep them alive: their faith in God, each other, and above all, themselves.
The Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg has said, “ There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” The Holocaust is one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, consisting of the genocide of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, mentally handicapped and many others during World War II. Adolf Hitler was the leader of Nazi Germany, and his army of Nazis and SS troops carried out the terrible proceedings of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps, and suffers a relentless “night” of terror and torture in which humans were treated as animals. Wiesel discovers the “Kingdom of Night” (118), in which the history of the Jewish people is altered. This is Wiesel’s “dark time of life” and through his journey into night he can’t see the “light” at the end of the tunnel, only continuous dread and darkness. Night is a memoir that is written in the style of a bildungsroman, a loss of innocence and a sad coming of age. This memoir reveals how Eliezer (Elie Wiesel) gradually loses his faith and his relationships with both his father (dad), and his Father (God). Sickened by the torment he must endure, Wiesel questions if God really exists, “Why, but why should I bless him? Because he in his great might, had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? (67). Throughout the Holocaust, Wiesel’s faith is not permanently shattered. Although after his father dies, his faith in god and religion is shaken to the core, and arguably gone. Wiesel, along with most prisoners, lose their faith in God. Wiesel’s loss of religion becomes the loss of identity, humanity, selfishness, and decency.
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.
The ground is frozen, parents sob over their children, stomachs growl, stiff bodies huddle together to stay slightly warm. This was a recurrent scene during World War II. Night is a literary memoir of Elie Wiesel’s tenure in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel created a character reminiscent of himself with Eliezer. Eliezer experienced cruelty, stress, fear, and inhumanity at a very young age, fifteen. Through this, he struggled to maintain his Jewish faith, survive with his father, and endure the hardships placed on his body and mind.
Night is an autobiography by a man named Eliezer Wiesel. The autobiography is a quite disturbing record of Elie’s childhood in the Nazi death camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald during world war two. While Night is Elie Wiesel’s testimony about his experiences in the Holocaust, Wiesel is not, precisely speaking, the story’s protagonist. Night is narrated by a boy named Eliezer who represents Elie, but details set apart the character Eliezer from the real life Elie. For instance, Eliezer wounds his foot in the concentration camps, while Elie actually wounded his knee. Wiesel fictionalizes seemingly unimportant details because he wants to distinguish his narrator from himself. It is almost impossibly painful for a survivor to write about his Holocaust experience, and the mechanism of a narrator allows Wiesel to distance himself somewhat from the experience, to look in from the outside.