The Holocaust and Night

The Holocaust and Night

There is a Jewish tradition, honored by the survivors of the Holocaust, to respect the memory of the dead by letting them rest in silence. However, to not talk about the sickening events of the Holocaust is disrespectful to the millions of Jewish people who fell victim to the Nazi camps. As a bearing witness to the Holocaust, Weisel gives his testimony about the crimes he has seen. These statements will bring remembrance for those who died and expose the perpetrators. Perhaps most importantly, it preserves for future generations the memory of what happened, so that it will never happen again. Night did not analyze the whole aspect of the Holocaust, but instead it focused on the experiences of a single victim, Eliezer. Weisel is not a character in the story; instead a boy named Eliezer who represents Weisel narrates the story. By doing so, Weisel was able to distance himself from the actual experience and look in on the story from the outside. Night revolves around Eliezer's emotional journey from a Orthodox Jewish boy to a corpselike boy who questions the existence of God and the humanity of man.

One question that the Jewish people constantly ask themselves is whether or not they could of escaped the Holocaust had they acted more wisely. In Night, there were many times when the Jews of Sighet had a glimpse of what was in store for them, but chose not to believe it. The Jews are unable to imagine the horrors in the concentration camps due to typical human inability to realize the cruelty of which men are capable.

Even when they arrived at Auschwitz, they continued to believe that it was just a work camp. Until the Jews experience the horrors of Auschwitz, they could not believe t...

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...uld have been better off dead. His survival was a stroke of luck. At the end, Eliezer looked at himself in the mirror and saw a corpse. While looking at the mirror, he stated, "The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me." Eliezer thought of himself as another person after the Holocaust. He felt that he had changed from an innocent boy to the lifeless corpse he saw in the mirror. However, when he looked back he realized that he was no longer that corpse who was liberated from Buchenwald. He will forever remember the look of the corpse's eyes, but he will keep himself separate from that corpse. Only by remembering can the survivors of the Holocaust ensure that this horrible event will never happen again. Night ended with the questions about God and man's capacity of evil, but with no answers. The responsibility is left to the reader.