How Is Others Portrayed In The Book Night By Elie Wiesel

Night by Elie Wiesel shines a light on the horrors that the Holocaust brought to millions of Jews and other minorities in Europe in the 1940’s. The Holocaust has many survivors with countless of different stories to tell, however, no other story is as quite in depth and horrific as Elie Wiesel’s. Wiesel wrote this book to inform the world about how awful his experiences were, and to make sure that we felt empathy for the victims and that we would never forget. Night covers just one man's horrendous experiences in the Holocaust, the Holocaust as a whole nevertheless, was single handedly, the largest example of Genocide in World History. We must never forget about these victims and always show Empathy towards them always.

Night captures all

Empathy is defined as the ability to understand someone else's feelings. Perhaps the moment in the book where we felt the most empathy was when Wiesel was describing the hanging of the Pipel: “Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked. ..For more than half an hour [the child in the noose] stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet extinguished.Behind me, I heard the same man asking: “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice within me answer him: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows. . . . (Wiesel 65)” This shows the horrors of the young boy that was hung. He was so frail that his hanging did not kill him instantly, instead it took about 30 minutes for him to die, the prisoners had to watch the whole thing. Another part in the book where we feel empathy the most is when Rabbi Eliahou is continuing to frantically search for his son, but his son is trying to avoid his father so he can distance himself from him before his father dies, Elie describes it like this: He had felt that his father was growing weak, he had believed that the end was near and had sought this separation in order to get rid of the burden, to free himself from an encumbrance which could lessen his own chances of survival. I had done well to forget that. And I was glad that Rabbi Eliahou should continue to look for his beloved son. And, in spite of myself, a prayer rose in my heart, to that God in whom I no longer believed. My God, Lord of the Universe, give me strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahou’s son has done.” (Wiesel 91) This quote makes us feel the utmost empathy for Rabbi Eliahou as he continues to seek out his son, but we