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Loss Of Identity In Night By Elie Wiesel

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“...I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.” Elie Wiesel ends the novel Night off with a notably grave, yet powerful statement. One would say that this quote symbolizes the theft the Jews endured through the event known as the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel and his father were some of the many victims who suffered to the hands of the Nazis within the concentration camps. The torturous actions forged by Hitler and his army lead to the robbery of life, identity, and faith. Inside of the camps even the names of the Jews were taken away from them and replaced by numerical tattoos. There was no joy or worship inside of the camp, …show more content…

For example, Elie Wiesel is no longer called Elie Wiesel, he is referred to as A-7713, this is just one step of many that starts to dehumanize and overall strip the Jews of their very own human rights. “I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either”(Wiesel, pg. 36). Elie was portraying how the Jew’s very own souls, essentially the most identifying aspect of a human, was being …show more content…

Silence was shown by more than just God, it was shown by the world watching this atrocity occur. “The world? The world is not interested in us. Today everything is possible, even the crematoria …" His voice broke.”(Wiesel pg. 33). Silence is an always present recurring theme in Night and may be the most powerful of the three symbols. To explain, silence is the only aspect that takes place through the entirety of the Holocaust and in Night. Readers can see that there was silence as Hitler took power and started to carry out his plans, there was silence when the Jews of Europe were being persecuted with antisemitism, silence was still seen as the Jews and dissidents began to be taken to concentration camps, silence was there when 6 million Jews were killed, and in the most breathtaking way silence was found in the hearts of all people after all of this has

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Weeded from the Jewish ghettos located in Sighet, Romania in May of 1944, fifteen year-old Elie Wiesel is planted in the cold, yet flame filled, concentration camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, one out of Hitler's 40,000 incarnation camps. In Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, Wiesel shares his gruesome experiences in great detail in which he endured within the two-years he was a Jewish prisoner. Elie Wiesel is one out of the minority of Jews to survive the Holocaust whilst World War ll took place in Europe. Although Elie Wiesel is a known survivor of this great cataclysm on humanity, the remainder of his family was not as fortunate to share that title. The death of his family, along with the many other deaths and forms of torture that Wiesel witnessed,

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With about 6 million Jewish deaths; 17 million total, the Holocaust was one of the worst genocides in human history. The memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel is a true story of Wiesel’s heartbreaking experience as a young Jewish boy, at the time of WWII, in the midst of the Holocaust and his struggle to survive it all. Throughout the book Night, Wiesel reveals his loss of innocence by using imagery, symbolism, and repetition. In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel uses repetition to express his loss of innocence.

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Elie Wiesel, in his novel, Night writes about how during the Holocaust, Jews faced brutalizing and had to overcome tremendous difficulties. He adopts a mournful tone in order to explore the idea that the Nazi persecution was atrocious with struggles in humanity. Through personification. Wiesel implies, trying to find strength from within can lead to isolation of the soul. Wiesel uses personification to demonstrate loneliness: “I shall never forget Juliek...

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Elie Wiesel is the author of the memoir, Night, which is written about his teenage experience in concentration camps during the Holocaust. During this book, he speaks about how his innocence becomes lost and the painful memories he’s had to keep from this time. Throughout the book, Wiesel uses symbolism, imagery, and foreshadowing to portray the theme, just because you overcome darkness doesn’t mean you’ll feel the peace of light. Wiesel uses symbolism to depict how dark the time he spent in the Holocaust was. An example of this was when he said, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed” (Wiesel 34).

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"Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow." (Wiesel, xiii) So ends the original Yiddish version of Night, with this sad but true vicious cycle, that Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel has broken with his traumatic memoir. He shows the world could not and should not forget the Holocaust, no matter how many sleepless nights or fiery flashbacks it causes, lest it happen again. Way before the tragic events were even being thought of, he was a studious child who lived in the safe and pious town of Sighet.

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There are many ways the Nazis attempted to dehumanize Jews. One way is to remove their name. In the part where they are getting sorted into blocks, Elie talks about his name getting taken away. " The three ‘veteran’ prisoners, needles in hand, tattooed numbers on our left arms. I have a A-7713.

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Many people have heard of the Holocaust but have never thought about how it affected an individual who went through it. The Holocaust is the most well-known genocide, although there are many other instances of mass killings, including the Bosnian Genocide. Bosnian Serb forces, with the backing of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, targeted both Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croatian civilians for wicked crimes resulting in the deaths of some 100,000 people (80 percent Bosniak) by 1995. It was the worst act of genocide since the Nazi regime’s destruction of 6 million European Jews during World War II. In the memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel reveals the negative impact the Holocaust had on his identity.

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Humans change throughout their life both physically and mentally. Some as they age, but also as they experience life-altering events. Elie Wiesel, author, and protagonist of his memoir, Night, had to experience the horrors of the Holocaust personally. This led him to modify his life in many aspects. Elie Wiesel changes throughout the story by losing his innocence, faith, and overall emotional standpoint.

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“How does one mourn for six million people who died? How many candles does one light? How many prayers does one recite? Do we know how to remember the victims, their solitude, their helplessness? They left us without a trace, and now we are their trace” -Elie Wiesel.

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The story Night the Jews are exposed to an uncaring, hostile world, which leads to destruction of faith and identity within the Jewish communities. The Jews are not expecting to be treated so awfully, but they are not willing to do all the things that the Germans want them to do. Near the beginning of the memoir, by Elie Wiesel Moche the Beadle undergoes a loss of faith after witnessing horrific acts of inhumanity. The Jews were treated as if they were trash on the street. No one felt the need to say anything because they felt they would be beaten even more.

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Bryce Bullock R. Gibson ENG IIB 8 March 2023 Night: A Darker Meaning Than The Midnight Sky Night is a powerful and unforgettable memoir written by Elie Wiesel about his experiences as a Jewish teenager during the Holocaust. The book’s title evokes a sense of darkness and fear that permeates the pages, and it is fitting because it reflects the physical and mental suffering that Wiesel and other Jews endured during their time in concentration camps. The title also has symbolic significance, representing the loss and death that the protagonists experience as they struggle to retain their faith and humanity. The title Night is layered with meaning, and it is a suitable choice for the book because it reflects the darkness and despair that characterizes the Holocaust.

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Elie Wiesel started out as an innocent 15 year old who constantly studied the talmud and was dedicated for his religion of judaism. However, how can someone keep of hold of such an identity when having to go through world war 2, and being sent to a concentration camp where many people see it as hell. Also, being labeled as just a number, and not even to be considered as a breathing human being thought to have any sort of emotion. Showing that you may have an identity going in, but it’s mostly likely going to vanish if you get out. That being said, the book Night by Elie Wiesel expresses the identity with Elie Wiesel through religion, but experiences a struggle keeping it while going to the concentration camp of

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1072 Words | 5 Pages

Elie Wiesel titles his book Night because night is significant to Elie’s experiences during the Holocaust because night symbolizes the darkening of souls and the loss in faith in others during this dark time period. It is also used as a passage of time to mark the most important and life changing moments in Elie’s life. One of the reasons Elie Wiesel chose to title his book Night is because the darkness of night represents the darkening of the souls and identities of many prisoners during the Holocaust. For example, after Elie’s first night in the concentration camp, he says, “The night was gone.

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1428 Words | 6 Pages

The word night ties in with darkness. Darkness, or the absence of light, is used in the book to convey the absence of self, love, peace, happiness, faith, and strength, which were all what the Jewish people lost during the Holocaust. Wiesel’s purpose for using this symbol was to provide the reader with a better understanding of the fear that he felt during his time in the concentration camps. In the Night, Wiesel says “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 smoke.

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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,

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