Elie Wiesel’s touching memoir, Night, shares intimate details about the cruelty of World War Two concentration camps and the horrors that occurred within them. Concentration camps were spread throughout Germany and Poland from 1933-1945 as the result of strong anti-Semitic views radiating from the President and Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler. In the memoir, Night, Wiesel shares of the time that he and his father endured being held captive in several concentration camps, and the battle to escape death, day after day. In the memoir, the significance of night was used throughout the piece to draw connections and emotions from the reader. In Night, night was used both literally and symbolically to portray the unknown, pain, and the end of a journey.
The powerful story of Ellie Wiesel, documented in the book night, lays bare the Holocaust, one of the worst atrocities ever committed. Over the course of WWII, more than 10 million people died of starvation, sickness, torture, and violence. The book documents this terrible event in striking detail, and is clear evidence of the willingness and ability for people to humiliate, torture, and kill others. The Holocaust was planned out and set in motion by a few powerful men, and carried out by thousands more who willingly took to the abominable task of mass murder.
The memoir written by Elie Wiesel, Night, is illustrating the Holocaust, the even which caused the death of over 6 million Jews. Auschwitz, the concentration camps, is responsible for over 1 million of the deaths. In the memoir Night, Wiesel uses the symbolism of fire, and silence to clearly communicate to the readers that the Holocaust was a catastrophic and calamitous event, and that children should never be involved in warfare. Elie Wiesel enters Auschwitz at the age of 15, and witnesses’ horrific events as a prisoner in Auschwitz, including the deaths of numerous children, and the beating and death of his own father. All these inhumane things were done just because Adolf Hitler wanted to cleanse the German society of the Jews.
Long Hours of Darkness “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.... Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live” (32). Never shall we forget the atrocious events that happened to upwards of six million Jews during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a genocide run by Adolf Hitler to exterminate nearly a whole population of Jews and very few prisoners lived to tell their treacherous stories.
Night has revealed to me the immensity of the suffering and ruthlessness that Jews were subjected to on daily basis during the holocaust in an emotional and moving first-hand experience. I choose a train, symbol of oppression, to represent the initial separation from a normal life in which everyone inside the crowded train car received, along with a taste of the pain and suffering that was soon to be forced upon them. I choose this quote to show how shocking mentally and physically the transition phase was from a normal life to that of the oppressed and to emphasize how easily he gave up in the beginning. Despite this, he managed to persevere and overcome the enormous challenges of surviving in a concentration camp.
World War II Essay Number Four “I shall never forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into ashes.” (Wiesel 34). Wiesel’s experience during the Holocaust shows the shocking side of the world through which no one had seen before. Wiesel’s book has impacted the world’s humanity to become better citizens with kindness. Within the historical nonfiction memoir, Night, by Ellie Wiesel, he shows his experience and suffering during the Holocaust, and the impacts of the Holocaust are still known to this day with continuous questioning of kindness and the existence of God on humanity Wiesel’s experience during the Holocaust was abject and brutal.
It is a common assumption among numerous people in the world that the Holocaust never existed. In fact, almost fifty percent of the world population never even heard of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel helped people around the world learn about the Holocaust through his book “Night.” He wanted people to see the bravery, courage, and guilt of the Jews through his book. “Night” shows the horrific and malicious acts in the German concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Night and Day In the great history of man, there is no event committed as gut-wrenchingly ignoble as the Holocaust. Therefore, conveying the devastation and emotional trauma on a believable and personal level is a sign of fantastic writing, which can be seen in Elie Wiesel’s Night. Moreover, to take this awful situation and put an almost light-hearted twist on it is also increasable, which is seen in the film “Life is Beautiful.” Accordingly, both of these mediums portray main characters that are in concentration camps, but present them in varying ways that create stories that feel completely different.
In the poignant memoir Night, the author Elie Wiesel uses compelling dramatic irony to portray the oblivious and discerning reactions towards the Nazi’s attempt to further dehumanize the Jewish people. On the seventh day of Passover, the German officers start arresting prominent leaders of the Jewish community. Quickly followed by the prohibition of Jews leaving their own residence, owning any sort of valuables and the requirement that all Jews must wear a yellow star. Despite the destitute conditions put upon the Jews in the Sighet ghetto, Elie’s father, Shlomo, tries to reassure the people of his community by advising:
More than 12,000 children under the age of 15 passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp, also known by its German name of Theresienstadt, between the years 1942 and 1944. Out of all the children, more than 90% lost their lives during the time of the Holocaust. Additionally, throughout this time, children would write poetry describing how they would like to be free and their faith in believing they would one day be free again and see the light of the sun. They would also write about the dreadful experiences they suffered through. To add on, the poet’s word choice helps to develop the narrator’s point of view.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the personal tale of his account of the inhumanity and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a young Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. Wiesel and his family are deported to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must learn to survive with his father’s help until he finds liberation from the horror of the camp. This memoir, however, hides a greater lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation.
Imagine living life as a caged animal. You are physically stable, take care of and given lots of attention. Yet, being caged restricts the ability of being free. It also depicts life as being underneath someone else’s control where the ability to make our own decisions cannot be made. This may seem cruel and unreal, yet many women today are living their lives in that cage, yet that cage is invisible.
At times, it appears unviable for one’s life to transform overnight in just a few hours. However, this is something various individuals experienced in soul and flesh as they were impinged by those atrocious memoirs of the Holocaust. In addition, the symbolism portrayed throughout the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, presents an effective fathoming of the feelings and thoughts of what it’s like to undergo such an unethical circumstance. For instance, nighttime plays a symbolic figure throughout the progression of the story as its used to symbolize death, darkness of the soul,
In this essay I have been asked to choose one of the twelve sections from ‘Staying Alive ‘and discuss why I believe it to be the most effective. It is clear that section 9 ‘War and Peace’ is the most effective. War poetry is harsh and to the point. It is filled with gruesome images and vivid descriptions of war time. The poems in this section will resonate with you for a lifetime.
“I Cannot Forget” is a poem written by Alexander Kimel in 1942 in which he tackles his experience in the Ghetto of Rohatyn. The title of the poem suggests an internal conflict from which the poet suffers. He wants to forget the days when “{The Jews} lived in terribly overcrowded quarters, were given too little to eat and little or no medicine and were forced to work in factories” (Abzug 110). However, he knows very well that he should not because millions of people died for the sake of one man.
