Analysis Of Night By Elie Wiesel And Survival In Auschwitz By Primo Levi

The Holocaust is a vicious memory that survivors hold each and everyday. From the tattoos on their arms, to the memories that haunt them, living as a prisoner of the Holocaust was no easy feat. Both books, Night written by Elie Wiesel and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi are memoirs written to show their readers the brutal experience and hardships they had to endure as prisoners of the Holocaust. In this paper, I will use Night by Elie Wiesel and Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi to compare and contrast the similarities and differences they both experienced while in concentration camps. The first event I will compare and contrast will be the event in which they are first exposed to Nazi’s and concentrations camps. The second event I will

Both writers illustrate a picture of what they witnessed in order to help the audience see what they saw. For example, in Survival in Auschwitz, Levi writes that he sees how, “… the mothers stayed up to prepare for the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and packed their luggage …” (15). The diction Levi uses in that sentence as well as the preceding and following that sentence also show impeccable detail in the way Levi conveys what he saw. It shows how observant he was. Levi made each and every experience detailed to give the readers an insight into how bad the event was. Levi writes about the tender care the mother possessed even during such a horrific time; this elaborates on how Levi wanted his readers to really imagine in our minds what was going on. Similarly, Wiesel also pays very close attention to detail. He describes the head of camp by saying that, “he was a stocky man with big shoulders, the neck of a bull thick lips and curly hair.” (47). Wiesel’s choice of words help paints a picture of what Wiesel was seeing at the camp. He could have just said that the head of camp was a big man with curly hair; however, he goes into great detail to describe him in order for the readers to see what he saw. Although Wiesel and Levi had very different experiences and perspectives of concentration

The first very big difference between Wiesel and Levi is age. Wiesel was first exposed to Nazi’s as a young boy who was twelve years old through Moishe the Beadle. Then a few years later, when he was fifteen, he is taken from his home to a concentration camp. Wiesel’s age is much different from Levi when taken to a concentration camp. Levi was twenty-four years old when he was taken to a concentration camp; that is almost a decade of age difference between the two. The age difference forced Wiesel and Levi to see and experience their first exposure to concentration camps and Nazi’s in differing perspectives. As a fifteen-year-old boy, Wiesel was taken to concentration camps without knowing the harsh reality of them and without knowing how difficult life as a Jew actually is during that time. In Night, Wiesel even goes on to say that, “… our first impressions of the German soldiers were rather reassuring … their attitude towards their hosts were distant but polite …” (9). In this chapter of the book, Wiesel still does not know who the German soldiers are what they are there to do. Although Wiesel and his hometown were previously told about the brutal German soldiers, Wiesel and many others did not believe him. They called him crazy and didn’t give much thought to Moishe the Beadle actually being right and foretelling what