Night by Elie Wiesel describes how Jews were treated in the concentration camps during World War II. During this time Wiesel witnessed many horrific acts. Two of these were executions. Though the processes of the executions were similar, the condemned and Jews’ reactions to the executions were different. For the first execution, he was accused of stealing during an alert. When he was put up on the gallows, no one seemed to care. It had been so normal that people were being killed daily that they grew accustom to it. Elie Wielsel on the other hand still had some difficulties with it. He had gotten used to the thousands dying in the crematories, but this one still “overwhelmed him”(Wiesel 59), as he put it. The Kapo wanted to bandage his eyes, but the man refused. After a period of waiting, the executioner put the noose around the man’s neck. Before they pulled the chair from his feet, in a calm, strong voice he cried: “Long live Liberty! A curse upon Germany! A curse…! A cur¬-“. (Wiesel 60). The executioner had finished his job. Wiesel said, “I remember the soup tasting excellent that …show more content…
All they knew was that three gallows were being prepared in the assembly place. Then began the Roll call. SS soldiers were everywhere, and machine guns at the ready, just an average traditional ceremony. The three condemned were walking towards the gallows, but one thing was different. One of them was a small young boy. As the head of the camp read the verdict, everyone was only looking at the child. The previous execution was nothing compared to this one. “To hang a child in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter.”(Wiesel 61). As Wiesel put it. The boy seemed almost calm as the gallows threw a shadow over him. The Lagerkapo denied having the responsibility as executioner and three SS replaced him. “Long live liberty!”(Wiesel 61). cried the adults but the child stood there in
I don’t think there is another quote out there that can better summarize life under Nazi rule. I think that this quote really gets the point across that if you see something terrible happening, and don’t try to stop it you’re just as bad as the person doing it. This really tells me that you can’t be afraid to speak up for something that is wrong, even if it means death. The quote mentions that if you stand by and lets all these bad things happen, that you are as guilty as the people doing them. I think that is very true, the counties who sat by and watched the holocaust happen are just as bad as the Nazis.
It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.
After the hangings, the prisoners said a prayer. But Eliezer says, “Why, but why would I bless His name?... He created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death” (Wiesel 67). Eliezer, and soon, the rest of the Jewish prisoners, wonders why God would let this happen. People were starting to not believe in God.
“Yes, you can lose somebody overnight, yes, your whole life can be turned upside down. Life is short. It can come and go like a feather in the wind. ”- Shania Twain.
The severely cruel conditions of concentration camps had a profound impact on everyone who had the misfortune of experiencing them. For Elie Wiesel, the author of Night and a survivor of Auschwitz, one aspect of himself that was greatly impacted was his view of humanity. During his time before, during, and after the holocaust, Elie changed from being a boy with a relatively average outlook on mankind, to a shadow of a man with no faith in the goodness of society, before regaining confidence in humanity once again later in his life. For the first 13 years of his life, Elie seemed to have a normal outlook on humanity.
In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.
At Auschwitz, it changes Elie 's mind and has a dramatic effect on him. "How could they burn the children?" (Night, 56). The Germans murdered many innocent and defenseless Jews for no reason.
The people had already put aside their emotions for others, and began to give up all hope for a better life, and then the public executions made many give up their religious beliefs and hope for a nice afterlife. Whenever the gallows first showed up, and the first hanging of a boy took place, Elie thought, “this boy, leaning up against the gallows, deeply upset me”(Wiesel, 62). The sense of justice and that the good were rewarded and the bad were punished began to fade. The Jews can see that the judges in the camps can do as they please and choose who lives and dies, and that the sentences are not always fair. The crematorium did not involve them looking death in the face, but with the gallows they were dehumanized because they could not look away from the facts that life is not fair and just, and that their beliefs should be doubted.
It was a new low for the German soldiers to kill a child, and it was this execution that made many of the Jews’ question the presence of God. Wiesel says, “That night, the soup tasted of corpses” (62). They felt remorse at the hanging of the pipel because he had been kind to them and was “loved by all” (Wiesel 60). So even though the prisoners had to watch similar hangings in Wiesel’s
It was a tragedy, a small boy dying, the prisoners would not want to look at it but they were being forced to by the Nazis. Though they could just close their eyes but their brains probably could not help but continue to look, or they could have wanted to pay respects to the dead. Even with this, they were somehow being forced to continue looking at the boy hanging in the gallows, no matter what they
Wiesel’s speech shows how he worked to keep the memory of those people alive because he knows that people will continue to be guilty, to be accomplices if they forget. Furthermore, Wiesel knows that keeping the memory of those poor, innocent will avoid the repetition of the atrocity done in the future. The stories and experiences of Wiesel allowed for people to see the true horrors of what occurs when people who keep silence become “accomplices” of those who inflict pain towards humans. To conclude, Wiesel chose to use parallelism in his speech to emphasize the fault people had for keeping silence and allowing the torture of innocent
As a Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel describes, “They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load--little children. Babies!” (Wiesel, 30). Hitler had
Throughout Elie Wiesel’s daunting novella Night, the experiences Elie faces brutally strips him
He leapt on me, like a wild animal, hitting me in the chest, on the head, throwing me down and pulling me up again, his blows growing more and more violent, until I was covered in blood” (Wiesel 50). This was one of the many mentions of vicious brutality committed by guards and soldiers. The use of beatings like this were both out of punishment for arbitrary things. For instance, Victor Montego witnessed a fatal beating in which a boy was killed for having no information to tell while Elie Wiesel suffered through one in order to keep information to himself. Beatings featured in both genocides were merciless and were used as
This explains that some Germans soldiers put their life on the way to go against Hitler to save people’s lives. So that they wouldn’t be executed from