The Event that Nobody Wants to Remember
Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, wrote about his horrifying experience in the concentration camps during World War II and titled it Night. Wiesel explained a little about his life before the notorious event and the asperities he encountered as a Jewish teenager. In this memoir, there are clarified explanations about the infamous event, the Holocaust. Wiesel’s first-hand account of the struggles he encountered as a Jewish prisoner is a primary resource for those whom wish to know about the hardships the Jewish inmates went through. In Night, there are examples of Aristotle’s appeals ethos, pathos, logos, and mood in which he uses successfully to relate his personal experiences
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“It had to be Juliek. He was playing a fragment of a Beethoven concerto… The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again.” (Wiesel 95) When Wiesel writes this, he has a deep connection with Juliek. At the time, Jews were not allowed to play any type of German music. Because Juliek plays Beethoven, it is as if Juliek is rebelling against the Nazis. He knows he will die soon under the clutter of people above him, and that’s why when he plays this piece of music, it is like him saying that SS no longer can control him. When Juliek plays Beethoven, he finally begins to feel free of the control that has killed him, and he has the courage to retaliate against the Nazis. Wiesel writes this to persuade the readers with this reasoning of retaliation. Another example of logos is after Elie visited the dentist’s office. Elie says, “A few days after my visit, the dentist’s office was shut down. He had been thrown into prison and was about to be hanged. It appeared that he had been dealing in the prisoners’ gold teeth for his own benefit.” This shows that even if a person is luckier than others, there is still greed in their soul. Although the Jewish dentist worked at Auschwitz, he was luckier than most of the other prisoners. He may have been given an extra ration for his work in dentistry, but he used his work for his own benefit. Wiesel adds this part of the story in the memoir to explain that because of living in the concentration camps, greed has become a factor of life to many of the prisoners. Even if those whom were lucky enough to pursue an occupation that benefitted the camp and were able to use it to their own benefit, they were still greed in their veins. They would do stuff for