Night And Schindler's List: A Comparative Analysis

The Holocaust was a horrible event in history that will scar humanity forever. With the events of the Holocaust being experienced by millions there are many different perspectives of said events. One such perspective is presented in Night, a memoir written by Elie Wiesel about his experiences as a young Jewish boy during the Holocaust. Another perspective is presented in Schindler’s List, a film directed by Steven Spielberg (based on the novel Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally) about Oskar Schindler, a gentile who saves over one thousand Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Both pieces show heart wrenching stories of the abuse of a group of people in different ways, each using different mediums to convey their points. The memoir and the film both show the dehumanization and stripping of rights of the Jews, have

At the time Sighet had a population of roughly 15,000 Jews and deportation happened over four days, with Elie being deported on either May 19th or 20th. Compared to Kraków, the city visualized in Schindler’s List, which had a population of roughly 60,000 Jews, the scale of the Sighet ghetto was smaller. The violence in Night is different than the violence shown in Schindler’s List. Night does not linger on the violence for long; death usually happens and the story moves on. Schindler’s List benefits from having visuals and being able to show the viewer the violence without pulling any punches. The violence is graphic and brutal, with shots lingering on the dead and on the unthinkable acts performed by the Nazis liquidating the Ghetto. The moments that stick out as the most brutal in both works include the image of infants being tossed into a flaming ditch in Night (32), and the mountain of dead Jews in Schindler’s List . Both of these moments encapsulate the toll of the Holocaust, with Night showing the death of a symbol of innocence, and Schindler’s List showing the sheer amount of dead. Once inside the