In Night, Elie Wiesel descriptively portrays the Holocaust and the experiences he has in each part of his survival. From the ghettos to the Death March and liberation, Elie Wiesel shares his story of sadness and suffering. Specifically Wiesel speaks about his short experience in the Sighet ghetto, a historically accurate recount illustrating the poor living conditions, the Judenrat and Jewish life in the ghetto as well as the design and purpose of the two Sighet ghettos. Wiesel’s description of the Sighet ghettos demonstrates the similar characteristics between the Sighet ghetto and other ghettos in Germany and in German-annexed territories. The Jews of the Sighet ghettos remained within the ghettos only for a short period of time. As a …show more content…
The Sighet Jews appointed a Jewish Council (known as the Judenrat) as well as “a Jewish police force, a welfare agency, a labor committee [and] a health agency” to govern the ghettos and manage issues within the ghetto (Wiesel 12). The Judenrat and the Jewish Police Force were integral to the management of each ghetto. Soon after Germany’s annexation of Poland, chief of the Gestapo Reinhard Heydrich ordered the establishment of a Jewish governing council in almost every ghetto. Generally comprised of twenty-four prominent Rabbis and authority figures in the Jewish community of each town, the Judenrat managed and instituted new legislation introduced by the Germans. The Judenrat also managed the needs of the Jewish community and ultimately were tasked with carrying out the liquidation of the ghettos (Berenbaum). As in Night, Judenrat members’ lives were threatened to ensure they obeyed orders and did not revolt. Aside from the Judenrat, many other ghettos also had welfare organizations. In the Warsaw ghetto, the Judenrat supported an orphanage system and a financial aid society among other welfare organizations (“Warsaw”). Similarly, the Lublin Judenrat administered the local Jewish hospital, orphanage and home for the elderly (“Lublin”). The Sighet ghettos mirrored other ghettos during the …show more content…
Wiesel recounts the cramped living conditions, the Jewish life and the design and purpose of the Sighet ghettos from its conception to its liquidation. His recount demonstrates the hardships and the dehumanization experienced by the Jewish people starting with their isolation and containment within the
Six million Jews died during World War II by the Nazi army under Hitler who wanted to exterminate all Jews. In Night, Elie Wiesel, the author, recalls his horrifying journey through Auschwitz in the concentration camp. This memoir is based off of Elie’s first-hand experience in the camp as a fifteen year old boy from Sighet survives and lives to tell his story. The theme of this memoir is man's inhumanity to man. The cruel events that occurred to Elie and others during the Holocaust turned families and others against each other as they struggled to survive Hitler's and the Nazi Army’s inhumane treatment.
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 his memoir “Night”, Elie Wiesel recalls his experience leading up to, in the middle of, and immediately following his forced servitude during the Holocaust. One of the most remarkable parts of Wiesel’s story is the dehumanization that occurs over the course of his imprisonment. In a system built to take away the identity of its subjects, Elie constantly grapples with his sense of self during the Holocaust and even finds himself lost by the end of the book. This loss of innocence and selfhood is a key element of Elie’s physical, emotional, and spiritual journey throughout the story.
In conclusion, Elie Wiesel’s novel Night shows us the dehumanization in the concentration camps by using tone, symbolism, and imagery. He sets the tone with the deep, dark ways he describes the terrible things that have happened to him and millions of others. His symbolic examples explain a further meaning than just an object, and the way he describes everything he saw in great detail, is
Throughout Night Wiesel’s most important motivation remains his father and almost nothing else. When Chlomo finally passes on at the end, Wiesel has nothing left to care about. Wisel writes, “I have nothing to say of my life during this period. It no longer mattered. After my father’s death, nothing could touch me anymore” (Wiesel 107). This book reminds us not only of the terror of the Holocaust, but of the importance of family in life.
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.
From Elie Wiesel’s book Night I learned that Jews could have escaped the Shoah; also I learned reasons why Jews stayed home and didn’t flee from the hands of the Hungarian Police and the Nazi’s. Elie Wiesel claims that others said, “ ‘Hitler will not be able to harm us, even if he wants to…’ ” (p. 8). This represents the terribly mistaken certainty of the Jews in Signet during the Holocaust. Jews didn’t flee when they had the chance and the warning because they did not think it would possible that he would “…wipe out a population throughout so many nations…in the middle of the twentieth century…” (Wiesel, 8). Through the horror, Wiesel and many others were wrong about Hitler, no matter the century, no matter the populous, the Führer was determined
“The shock of this terrible awakening stayed with us for a long time” (Wiesel 818). The short story Night, by Elie Wiesel portrays the hardships of the nights he spent in the Holocaust. The story informs the reader of the many ongoings that Wiesel has before him when he enters into this setting. The story begins on the train ride to the internment camp called Auschwitz, leading to selection days and loss of others, to the nights of walking through the cold and hearing sweet tunes slowly be put out. Within Elie Wiesel’s story, Night, the author is communicating the message to keep pushing forward and to stay strong because even Wiesel is put through terrifying dreams from others and hard nights filled with sobbing but to him, it is like no one ever would understand.
In particular, the Germans began ghettos like this one, in order to gather and contain Jews until the “Final Solution” could be further implemented. In particular, after the Germans invaded Poland, they knew that it would be necessary to get rid of the Polish Jews, knowing that with 30% Jews, Warsaw had the 2nd greatest Jewish population. An area was needed to contain the Jews as the concentration camps would take time to build and had limited human capacity. As a result, they chose to create a closed ghetto, as it was easier for the Nazis to block off a part of a city than to build more housing for the Jews. The Germans saw the ghettos as a provisional measure to control and segregate Jews while the Nazi leadership in Berlin deliberated upon options for the removal of the Jewish population. In essence, the Warsaw ghetto was a step from capturing and identifying the Jewish to deporting them to another location. So how exactly was the ghetto
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
Chaim Rumkowski the appointed leader of the ghetto and judennat attempted to goad them into requiring a smaller amount of people taken for daily transport, but produced nearly fruitless results.He formulated the lists and organized which types of people would be taken. The Judennat was the jewish police force of the ghetto and aided the Germans in rounding up the unfortunate Jews chosen.First it was the old, sick, and children , and then there was no differentiation, it was just luck of the draw. Around this time, the germans began populating the ghetto with Jews from all of german-occupied Europe, and the ghetto became even more crowded. Though by now 1/3 of the original population had perished, their lives and stories nearly forgotten. During September a curfew was set and those who failed to meet it were punished severely. The ghetto continued to be used as a labor camp with produced many of the ammunition and guns used for Germanys army.In 1944, it began liquidation and served its original purpose which was to be used as a transit facility. A colleague named Himler instructed this fellow party member the natzi chief of Wategou to fully clear out the
Many themes exist in Night, Elie Wiesel’s nightmarish story of his Holocaust experience. From normal life in a small town to physical abuse in concentration camps, Night chronicles the journey of Wiesel’s teenage years. Neither Wiesel nor any of the Jews in Sighet could have imagined the horrors that would befall them as their lives changed under the Nazi regime. The Jews all lived peaceful, civilized lives before the German occupation. Eliezer Wiesel was concerned with mysticism and his father was “more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin” (4).
Night is a memoir written by Elie Wiesel. This autobiography of Wiesel’s life manages to reach the perfect balance between an in-depth story and simplistic writing. The novel tells of a young Elie’s journey from the invasion of his tight knit Jewish community in Sighet to the numerous concentration camps he was taken to. One camp was Auschwitz, where his mother and younger sister Tzipora were separated from him and his father. Later on, Elie and his father were taken to Camp Buna, a sub-camp of Auschwitz. Finally, Elie was taken to his third and last camp, Buchenwald. Buchenwald is where Elie’s father ultimately died of dysentery, only days before the American troops came to release them. In Night, Elie Wiesel uses the title night to symbolize the darkness of these events and the lifelessness of faith.
In September of 1939 German soldiers defeated Poland in only two weeks. Jews were ordered to register all family members and to move to major cities. More than 10,000 Jews from the country arrived in Krakow daily. They were moved from their homes to the "Ghetto", a walled sixteen square block area, which they were only allowed to leave to go to work.