Night By Elie Wiesel: Source Analysis

There are countless ways to learn about the Holocaust and the trials and tribulations that the victims went through. However, not all of these sources are necessarily helpful. Some resources just are not suitable for all audiences whether that be because of the amount (or lack) of information that the audience attains, how direct the information being presented is, the credibility of the information, or the ability to hold the audience’s interest, just to name a few factors. An audience like a high school class learning the basics of the Holocaust, for example, is very different than a college history class and therefore likely shouldn’t be studying from the same materials. A few examples of sources that a teacher may consider for teaching

This factor is important for an audience of any age but for a group like high schoolers who are mostly laying down the basics of life in concentration camps the resources they use need to have reliable information so that the base that they lay down for further learning is helpful. Of the three resources, Night was the most credible since was written first hand by Elie Wiesel who had lived through life in multiple concentration camps. Someone could make the argument that, being a very successful, published book, there were multiple people involved in the making who could have suggested or made tweaks and changes to the true story that Wiesel intended to tell. While this could have been what happened, it is highly unlikely given the fact that Wiesel went on to do a lot of publicity work for Night and some of his other books and works as well as being an activist and he never once spoke of anything being altered in his book. "Tales from Auschwitz: Survivor Stories" is a close second for credibility because the article is made up of verbatim stories of lives in various concentration camps. The reason that this article is not ranked as equally credible as Night is because the stories are not written first hand. The author of the article, Kate Connolly, wrote down what she heard from the survivors that were interviewed. With this process, there could easily have been misunderstandings and, with there being a second party involved in writing up this article (the author), liberties could have been taken to make the article more interesting to readers but less factually accurate. Lastly, Auschwitz Death Camp with Oprah and Elie Wiesel ranks as equally credible to the articles because, although a first hand survivor was present (Elie Wiesel), parts of the documentary could have been staged to get more viewers engaged in the documentary therefore not making the documentary as accurate as it could have been. And