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Expeences at a concentration camp
Expeences at a concentration camp
Conditions of concentration camps
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Expeences at a concentration camp
Expeences at a concentration camp
Conditions of concentration camps
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In chapter eight of Night, Elie’s father, Shlomo, struggled with inhuman treatment more than once. He became ill and was unable to control where and when he relieved himself. Shlomo had gotten dysentery from drinking the polluted water. The other sick prisoners he was housing with were so displeased, they beat him. “Eliezer… Eliezer… tell them not to beat me… I haven’t done anything… Why are the beating me?”
The guards were not the only ones who were cruel that are inside the camp, some of the prisoners had done some pretty disgusting things. Franek, a prisoner, wanted Elie’s golden crown and did not stop tormenting Elie’s father since Elie did not give the crown at first. Elie needed his crown in order to eat, but Elie could not see his father being tormented. Franek would probably receive more rations for the crown and when he could not get it, “that presented Franek with the opportunity to torment him and, on a daily basis, to thrash him savagely” (Wiesel 55). Later, when roll call happened, Elie’s father was pleading with Elie for some food and drink because he had a fever.
(page 57). At this moment, Elie is being lashed with a whip. He is being punished in a cruel, degrading way. Another right that was broken was Article 9.
As several Jews jumped off the wagon an SS officer said, “Men to the left! Women to the right!” (Wiesel 29). In this instance, they treat the Jews as if they were not human, but a herd of animals, giving countless commands to separate them from their loving family. Elie and his father were forced against their own will to seperate from their own family, even if they did not want to.
In chapters 4 to 6 in the novel, “Night”, Elie Wiesel and his father continue to suffer in the grasp of the Germans. Eventually, all the Jews are moved to a new work camp, Buna, where they are overworked and undernourished, and resort to killing each other for pieces of bread. In his old home, Elie had never experienced brutality and inhumanity within it. Now, Elie and other Jews witness extreme violence and an absence of mercy that begins to erode their mental state; bringing most men to animalistic tendencies. In chapter 4, the Jews arrive in Buna.
While their dads were telling them not to. During that Elie wanted to help his father to march and not be mocked at or beaten up. The other inmates started to laugh and Elie distinctly remembered “My father had never served in the military and could not march in step. That presented Franek with the opportunity to torment him and, on a daily basis, to thrash him savagely….But my father did not make sufficient progress, and the blows continued to rain on him”(55).The germans was beating up Elie’s dad.
Elie and the other prisoners are fully exposed to the horrible inhumanity of the Nazis. Due to the brutal methods of the Nazis, they are transformed from respected individuals into obedient, animal-like automatons.
They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.” (pg. 19) When the soldiers took them away from their home to be put in a camp of labor or death was something they never thought would happen to them. Elie did not realize the journey they were going to go through until he saw the reactions of his parents’ when the soldiers came for them.
A single needle attached to a pen holder took away someone’s identity. A pair of disheveled, ill-fitting rags stripped someone of their individuality. Depriving someone of basic necessities took away their soul. Upon arrival at the camps Elie and his father were separated from his female family members, never to see them again. Immediately, Elie along with the other prisoners were subjected to camp life.
On page 65 Elie remembers a hanging, “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.” This statement implies that Nazis did not care if they were cruel or inhumane even to children. Also the Nazis made prisoners watch the boy struggle for life until he finally died, these hangings happened almost every day. It is hard to realise how cruel the Nazis truly were, but with the violations of Article Five, people can see just how inhumane they
For no reason other than his foul mood, he “threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground and picking me up again, crushing me with ever more violent blows, until I was covered in blood” (53). The use of the word “crushing”, truly shows the violence in this act. Elie was being battered, crushed by this Kapo, simply for existing in his general vicinity. The willingness to beat another human being for your own pleasure is completely
Throughout the book, Elie is met with many things. Nazi’s physical and psychological abuse that was given to the prisoners, the Jews acquired animalistic behaviors and . The act of dehumanizing the prisoners is shown through physical and psychological abuse. For example, when Elie’s father asks a gypsy officer a question, he gets back a violent response.
When the prisoners in the death camps experience vile acts every day, they are bound to commit them as well, to ensure their survival. This is most expressed in chapter seven, where the son killed his father for a measly piece of bread, only to be killed by other prisoners who were just as starved. The prisoners needed to eat survive and the only way to eat at this time was to kill others to steal their food. This is not ethical or right, but it was the only thing that the prisoners could do to survive. It is surprising that Elie and his father did not succumb to these malicious acts because they also experienced terrible trauma.
Elie is so afraid of being beaten or killed that he allows his father to be beaten on multiple occasions. This starts early on, the first day after they arrive at the camp Elie feels that the environment he has been placed in has changed him “What had happened to me? My father had just been struck, before my very eyes, and I had not flickered an eyelid. I looked on and said nothing. Yesterday, I should have sunk my nails into the criminal’s flesh.
Suffering not only forces people to make inhumane decisions but it also causes people to lose hope and give up on themselves. In this section of the book, Elie describes a time where he was devastated to see his father beaten and hurt in the camps. Throughout his time in the camps, Elie saw and heard the abuse that was given to people in the camp killing his hope. The biggest turning point in the story was when he saw his father getting beat. When Idek “began beating [Elie’s father] with an iron bar … [Elie’s] father simply doubled over under the blows, but then [Elie's father] seemed to break in two like an old tree struck by lightning”