ipl-logo

It's Important To Bear Witness In Night By Elie Wiesel

895 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Conditions in concentration camps

"Look, it's important to bear witness. Important to tell your story.... You cannot imagine what it meant spending a night death among death." These are the words spoken by Elie Wiesel when he speaks about his experience during the Holocaust and how it ended. Throughout his time in the different concentration camps, Elie had to endure the toughest of circumstances. The prisoners would not eat for days, were forced to go on marches that would last for miles, and through it all, many of the prisoners would just drop and none of them would have the will to go on. This destroyed everything a person had ever believed in. As a result of his experiences during the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel changes from a religious, sensitive boy to a spiritually dead, …show more content…

At his arrival at Birkenau, the innocent meaning Elie once had in his life just slipped away and he slowly comes to knowing that things are never going to be the same in his life. He is separated from his mother and sister not realizing that he would never see them again. I could not bear to lose my family. That alone would give me almost no will to live. He witnesses the deaths of many babies as he walks into the camp. He does not understand why so many lives are so easily ended. This is when he doubts God's justice for his followers. Within his first week of being in the camp, he is forced into a new identity and is stripped of every shred in dignity he has ever had. He slowly begins to doubt how any God would allow this treatment on the ones that follow him. In his book Night, Elie writes this. "Never Shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments murdered my God and my soul and turned my

Show More
Related
300 Words | 2 Pages

In this book Elie speaks of his hardships and how he survived the concentration camps. Elie quickly changed into a sorrowful person, but despite that he was determined to stay alive no matter the cost. For instance, during the death

Read More
153 Words | 1 Pages

In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.

Read More
487 Words | 2 Pages

The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in history. It just so happened to be the cause of six million deaths. While there are countless beings who experienced such trauma, it is impossible to hear everyone's side of the story. However, one man, in particular, allowed himself to speak of the tragedies. Elie Wiesel addressed the transformation he underwent during the Holocaust in his memoir, Night.

Read More
600 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the few years he spends traveling from camp to camp, he learns more about himself and what means the most to him. Over time, he discovers that he lives and continues on for his father. When he enters the first camp, Birkenau, he acts as if survival is all matters, but by the end of his treacherous journey he is simply living day to day, and after the death of his father, he is only a shadow of the boy he once was. On Elie's first day in camp his only goal is survival, for him as well as his

Read More
742 Words | 3 Pages

"...to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all..." The Holocaust killed over 6-7 million people. Jews were forced to live in specific areas of the city called ghettos after the beginning of World War ll. In the larger ghettos, up to 1,000 people a day were picked up and brought by train to concentration camps or death camps. Elie Wiesel was a survivor in the Holocaust.

Read More
497 Words | 2 Pages

On September 1, 1939 World War II began. Germany and the axis powers were trying to get Europe to be in Nazi control. With this came the wrath of Adolf Hitler. He believed the reason why Germany lost World War I and had a huge economic crisis was because of the Jewish population, the mentally ill, blacks, and gypsies. He believed the only way to cleanse the world and prevent that from happening again was to exterminate those people.

Read More
372 Words | 2 Pages

Hope is a powerful thing; more powerful than death itself. Night, by Elie Wiesel, is about a jewish boy who is put into a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Elie doubted his faith to survive but had others to lean on during the hardship. Elie had the support of others as a sense of hope to survive the long, cold nights, with little food and water.

Read More
419 Words | 2 Pages

The severely cruel conditions of concentration camps had a profound impact on everyone who had the misfortune of experiencing them. For Elie Wiesel, the author of Night and a survivor of Auschwitz, one aspect of himself that was greatly impacted was his view of humanity. During his time before, during, and after the holocaust, Elie changed from being a boy with a relatively average outlook on mankind, to a shadow of a man with no faith in the goodness of society, before regaining confidence in humanity once again later in his life. For the first 13 years of his life, Elie seemed to have a normal outlook on humanity.

Read More
929 Words | 4 Pages

Imagine being a young 15 year old boy barely fed, dehydrated and at a camp that was created for the purpose of killing thousands of people and immediately once you arrive losing your mother and sister. Elie shows extreme mental strength during this event, rather than trying to stop it from happening

Read More
867 Words | 4 Pages

Elie Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor who strongly believes that people need to share their stories about the Holocaust with others. Elie Wiesel was in concentration camps for about half of his teen years along with his father. After being the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust he resolved to make what really happened more well-known. Elie Wiesel wrote dozens of books and submitted an essay titled “A God Who Remembers” to the book This I Believe. The essay focused on Elie Wiesel’s belief that those who have survived the Holocaust should not suppress their experiences but must share them so history will not repeat itself.

Read More
901 Words | 4 Pages

There is a set time frame between life and death. Once the line is crossed, there is no return. This is why Elie Wiesel feels it is so important to bear witness. Bearing witness is to be a constant observer, to consider all possibilities, and to act when it is time. Elie Wiesel wrote his memoir Night so people could learn to act when it is necessary.

Read More
559 Words | 3 Pages

The power of human resilience is reflected by how Elie Wiesel remains humane throughout the tragedy of the Holocaust, as expressed in Night. Over the course of the book, Elie shows how he survives the tyrannical reign of Hitler and the Nazis in the camps, with his growth as a person, his resilience against inhuman actions and his survival. These are just a few examples, each being a significant factor to his life, and important to the story. Elie Wiesel shows his growth as a person during the holocaust, one thing that he does is maintain his morals and does not let how he was treated effect that. Elie had death on his mind more times than one, but never did he act upon them or cave in, “If I was going to kill myself, this was the time…

Read More
158 Words | 1 Pages

Another example of survival and compassion is how Elie had given up everything in order to keep his father alive. Elie still used compassion and gave up his own needs for his father late in the story. By the end of the story everyone was starving and acting un-human like. For example, the men were “tearing and beating each other like animals” over a piece of bread. Instead of doing this Elie shares food with his father in order for him to survive.

Read More
1300 Words | 6 Pages

In the span of a lifetime one often faces many adversities that stand within their path.  While some challenges will be overcome easily, others will take a lot more tenacity. When in the face of adversity it is key not to give up. One should always strive to persevere through their hardships, no matter how severe they seem to be. The author of the memoir “Night” Elie Wiesel, vividly describes his experiences in the concentration camp of Auschwitz.

Read More
806 Words | 4 Pages

Paradox, parallelism, personification, repetition, rhetorical question, pathos. You may ask yourself: what importance do these words have? These words are rhetorical devices used to develop a claim. A person who used these important devices was Elie Wiesel. In his 1986 Nobel Peace Acceptance Speech, Elie Wiesel develops the claim that remaining silent on human sufferings makes us just as guilty as those who inflicted the suffering and remain guilty for not keeping the memory of those humans alive.

Read More

More about It's Important To Bear Witness In Night By Elie Wiesel

Related Topics

Open Document