Choices In Night By Elie Wiesel

Trapped Choices

They were given so many choices, only to be led down a path that conjoined at the end regardless of how long it took or how they got there, and one of the millions who walked that path was Elie Wiesel. The path was an intricate structure, perfected by the Nazi party during the period of WWII from 1933 to 1945. It was used as a way of mental, physical, psychological, and even generational torture as the lasting effects of it have lived through the families of those who walked this path. After the manipulation of not only the German population but the Jewish as well, the Nazi party, with the Axis Powers, moved Jewish, Polish, gypsy, and other groups through the process of the Holocaust, using it as a systematic way for mass execution

The Nazi party confined and separated Jews from society, only providing the necessary rations. The Jewish were eventually forced to adapt to this new lifestyle and appoint their own small society within their community, electing small leaders and even law enforcement. “. We even thought ourselves rather well of; we were entirely self-contained. A little Jewish republic.... We appointed a Jewish Council, a Jewish police, an office for social assistance, a labor committee, a hygiene department --a whole government machinery. “(pg 16). However, just when the Jewish Ghetto seemed to be almost normal in the memoir Night Elie then describes how the Jewish leaders are told they must choose the next list of victims for whatever the Nazi party had in store for them or else they would choose randomly. The Leader of the Ghetto made the painful decision to write down the names of the sick, the elderly, and those who couldn’t work including younger ages of children.”’I have terrible news,’ he said at last. ‘Deportation.’ The ghetto was to be completely wiped out. We were to leave street by street, starting the following day.”(pg 18). This growing pressure resumed from the Nazi enforcement until they eventually moved everyone to a new location group by group, Elie’s group being the last chosen. This string of events shows that even though the Jewish community was able to settle a new way of

The memoir Night explains how Elie and his family are originally separated and sorted by sex, age, profession, and physical capability. After being separated from his sister and mother, with only his father by his side, he is forced to go through the grueling process of camp admission, even after learning the horrific fates suffered by his sister and mother.”Who knows what may have become of them - but we had little concern for their fate. We were incapable of thinking of anything at all...A barrel of petrol at the entrance.. Disinfection. Everyone was soaked in it, Then a hot shower. At high speed. As we came out from the water, we were driven outside. More running. Another barrack, the store. Very long tables. Mountains of prison clothes. On we ran.”(pg 45). Later on in the process, he is admitted to the camp Buna and almost immediately warned by other prisoners to stay in the camp since it was one of the better ones and stay away from the building force. Elie’s thoughts of how he sees this as a forced choice are also mentioned in this scene of the memoir Night.”We began to look for familiar faces, to seek information, to question the veteran prisoners about which labor unit was the best, which block one should try to get into. The