Vincent Hildebrandt-Rojo
Ms. Cutler
English Honors
3 March 2023
Night Essay
“We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive.” (31) This quote from Night by Elie Wiesel paints a clear picture of companionship and community that Elie and his fellow Jews had to create to survive the Holocaust. Night by Elie Wiesel is a memoir about the author’s experiences as a 15 year old Jewish boy during World War II, when he and his family were brought to Jewish concentration camps. When Elie was separated from his mother and sister, he and his father recounted the numerous acts of physical and psychological abuse. These ranged from uncontrolled beatings
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For instance, the Germans' use of human ovens on page 25 left the Jews feeling so helpless that they recited the prayer of death for themselves, an unprecedented occurrence in Jewish history, “I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer of the death for themselves.” This quote reveals the Germans' ability to inflict generational trauma on the Jews by leading them directly to their death, stripping them of their identities and leaving them without hope. It sheds light on how the Germans' actions resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews and destroyed their sense of identity and belonging. Consequently, the Jews losing their faith, as seen on page 49, where Wiesel questions his own reality and expresses his outrage, frustration, and despair at the atrocities committed by the Germans,“Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in His great might He had created Auswhitwz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death? How could I say to Him: “blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master of the universe, Who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in the crematory? Praised be Thy Holy Name, Whou Who hast chosen us to be butchered on Thine altar?” This quote captures the Jews' sense of outrage and despair at the Germans' actions, leading them to question their own identity. The importance of this quote lies in how the Germans created an identity crisis for the Jews, which made Hitler's plan to eradicate the Jewish race possible. Hence, Hitler's plan of genocide against the Jews was executed through the use of physical and