Night By Elie Wiesel And Life Is Beautiful, By Roberto Benigni

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed” (Wiesel 34). The eternal night claims those who are victims of the holocaust and continues to haunt them. The holocaust’s devastating effects echo throughout history and serve as a model of humanity at its worst. No form of media can truly convey the horrors of the holocaust, but through the years, films and literature about the holocaust bring the emotional experience to the general public. Two influential pieces of media about the holocaust are Night, by Elie Wiesel and Life is Beautiful, directed by Roberto Benigni. Wiesel was a holocaust survivor that lost several loved ones including his father to the concentration camps.

In both pieces of media, persecution of jews are major conflicts. The Natzi’s gradual intervention with the Jewish culture and the attempt of genocide plagues the lives of both Elie and Guido throughout their narratives. Elie experiences this intrusion early on and loses his freedoms, as the Natzis prepare themselves to erradicate their fellow man by making the Jews less human. If a man has no rights and people treat him as a lower life, then it is easier to kill them with fewer moral complications. The dehumanization is so natural that the Jews think “this [is] a good thing,” as the Natzis enclose them in ghettos and prepare for genocide (Wiesel 12). Even though Elie and his family are unaware of what is going to happen, the reader knows that this is the start of the dehumanization process, which creates dramatic irony. The revelation of their predicament fuels the remaining conflicts in the story including the interior conflict inside Elie. The inhumane circumstances create a breaking point that challenges his faith because if human beings are capable of such heinous acts then can there be a God. Likewise, Guido experiences Jewish persecution that drives the conflicts throughout the movie. During the film, thugs attack Guido’s uncle and paint his horse green and label the horse as a Jewish horse, which foreshadows future dehumanization of Jews and the holocaust (Benigni). Just like Elie, he brush off the foreshadowing of the holocaust as nothing important until he reaches the camps where conflicts that he does not know exist come to the light. From their Guido faces similar conflicts as Elie such as starvation, hard labor, and the Natzis treat him like a lower human being. He endures these trials for his family showing that love and comradery is a powerful tool for combating