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Night Research Paper

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Night Essay

Throughout world war two, thousands upon thousands of Jews around Europe were forcefully deported to inhumane concentration camps by the Nazis, who they believed were unequal to them. Millions died, however, many also survived and some spoke of their experiences. In his memoir Night, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel recounts the horrors and feats that he and his father encountered while imprisoned in numerous concentration camps towards the end of WWII. During that time, Elie faced many decisions that had pronounced impacts on his beliefs, faith in humanity, and life. From the decisions he makes, Elie's innocence and identity are both negatively, and positively changed throughout his experience as a concentration camp prisoner. …show more content…

At their arrival at Birkenau, Elie is confronted by an inmate who asks him his age and tells him, “No you’re eighteen (Wiesel 30).” When an officer then asks Elie his age, he lies and tells him he is eighteen, his father also lies. This decision was positive in the moment, allowing them to be sent to a labor camp together instead of the crematorium, but in the long road, had negative implications. It is negative due to all the atrocities that he and his father experience in their fight to stay together and alive as prisoners in the concentration camps. Elie's innocence is also stripped from him afterward when he witnesses, “A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes ... children thrown into the flames (Wiesel 32).” Elie did not understand how people were doing this to others, this was the beginning of Elie’s lost hope in humanity after seeing this. During this, he also begins to question his faith in God, with anger he asks, “Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for? (Wiesel …show more content…

Elie had the choice to remain at the camp but thought it was best to evacuate believing that those who remained would be killed. This choice negatively impacted his life because of the hardships he and his father had to endure afterwards such as marching/running through the snow, the deaths of Elie's friends Zalman and Juliek, near-death misses, and in the future, the death of his father. It was negative because he and his father could have been saved if they stayed, due to the camp being liberated two days after they had left. This affected his identity and innocence by causing him to further lose his faith in humanity. This is because on the journey to Gliewitz, Elie was taking shelter in a shed until Rabbi Eliahu came in asking people if they had seen his son. Elie then realizes that his son had purposefully left him while they were running to increase his own chance of survival. After telling Rabbi Eliahu he has not seen him, Elie then prays, "Oh God, Master of the Universe, give me the strength never to do what Rabbi Eliahu's son has done (Wiesel 91)." He wishes he won't give into his own selfish desires and leave his father as well, this causes him to further lose his faith in humanity due to the discovery of Rabbi Eliahu’s son abandoning

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He made it out alive. The choiceless choices and being alongside his father helped Elie greatly in this process. If he did not make the choices he did in camp, he would not have made it out alive. By telling the SS officer that he was eighteen, he was not sent to the crematorium to die. Even though choosing to work meant he had to undergo undeniably hard conditions, he did it and made it through.

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Hunter Creguer Mrs. Malmquist English 1B 10 May 2024 Violence and Effect of the Holocaust Have you ever wondered how extreme the violence the Jews experienced during the Holocaust was? The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a great account of a young boy who was sent to the concentration camp called Auschwitz and was able to make it out alive. In Night, a boy named Elie is sent to a concentration camp called Auschwitz after he and his family get removed from their town. Elie gets separated from his sister and mother and is left with his dad, but ends up being alone once Auschwitz gets liberated. During the Holocaust, Jews saw and experienced unimaginable amounts of violence on a daily basis and they got so used to it that it barely affected them.

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Christian Rock English 2 Mrs. Burd 02/27/2023 The Night Essay In the book "The Night '' by Elie Wiesel, Shows the horrific events of Elie’s experience in Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz during the Holocaust. This book presents a powerful and sad account of the atrocities committed by the Nazis during this period of history. For example, Elie uses imagery and pictionary words to describe the events of the concentration camp Auschwitz.

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Elie, once so faithful, is one of the first to lose faith in God due to the horrific sights he sees. After witnessing the bodies of Jewish children being burned, Wiesel writes, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (34). He quite understandably has begun to doubt that his God is with him following the sight of the supposedly chosen people’s bodies being unceremoniously burned. Elie, though, was perhaps not a member of the masses with this belief; in fact, some men were able to hold on to their beliefs despite these horrendous sights. Also near the middle of the book, Wiesel reflects on the faith of other Jews in the face of these events, saying that “some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come.

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Night, an autobiography that was written by Elie Wiesel, is from his perspective as a prisoner. The book focuses on Wiesel and his father experiencing the torture that the Nazis put them through, and the unspeakable events that Wiesel witnessed. The author, Wiesel, was one of the handfuls of survivors to be able to tell his time about the appalling incidents that occurred during the Holocaust. That being the case, in the memoir Night, Wiesel uses somber descriptive diction, along with vivid syntax to portray the dehumanizing actions of the Nazis and to invoke empathy to the reader.

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This quote is where Elie makes it official that he is spiritually dead. In this scene a couple people were caught preparing for a rebellion and the kid was one of them. As punishment all of the people involved were hanged. At this point Elie is convinced that God is dead, and he died with the boy on the gallows. Using spiritual death as a motif allowed Elie to convey a sense of hopelessness, that the only way

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Elie, fumed “I too had become a different person. The student of the Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded-and devoured-by a black flame” (37). Elie has started completely losing all faith in God and his place in Elie’s soul was now a black flame.

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Elie’s relationship was cut off, as he was split from his mother and younger sister in the camps. As a young boy, Elie had the choice to go with his mother when they were separated. In addition to his loss of relationships Elie also begins to lose his faith due to the conditions that he suffered through. Elie faces enough dehumanization throughout his experiences in the camp that he views himself as less than human, and he starts to question if God is truly there. After being in the concentration camps for multiple months, Elie is sent to Buna and begins working in a warehouse for electrical parts.

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Nelson Mandela once said, “To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.” This quote connects with Elie Wiesel’s novel, Night, which narrates how human rights were taken away from Jews, leading to traumatic experiences during the Holocaust. During World War II, Adolf Hiter, a German politician rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, and is also responsible for causing the Holocaust to happen, which is the genocide of European Jews. The Nazis ordered thousands of Jews to different concentration camps, where they forced labor, killed, and experimented with ethics. Nazi concentration camps were not a good place to be, because there were constant worries about death.

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After Elie and his father spend the night at the camp, Elie feels as if he has lost his innocence. When Elie first arrives at the camp, the first thing he sees when he walks inside is babies being thrown into a fire. Grown men being forced to burn and die right in front of him. Elie seeing this changes his outlook on life. He starts to feel as if his soul jumped into the fire but he physically did not.

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Elie notices " a truck . [unloading] babies " (32 ) and is immediately terrified that " a little farther on , there would be a pit for adults . " (32 ) . Once again , Elie is being mentally dominated through the fear of receiving the same violence that other people are encountering . Elie was in constant wonder and fear of the treatment him and his father would experience .

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Even in the wretched situation that the Jews were going through, Elie prays that he himself did not think like the son that he would stay by his father. Elie, who still had his innocence and was not yet aware of the changes in his life, had a major shift of opinion later on in the book when he wrote “if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the Kapo but at my father. Why couldn't he have avoided Idek's wrath?” (Wiesel 54) Elie had lost his identity and himself but that was what living in a concentration camp had made Elie turn into and eventually his survival began to mean

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Since the boys are different ages and have different experiences at the camps, the focus of innocence will vary between the children. Elie is a fifteen year old boy who sees things that force him to grow up and is the one who loses his innocence upon arrival at the camp. Elie arrives and sees, “Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes... children thrown into the flames,” which forces him to grow up because that can be him at any moment (Wiesel 32).

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Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night tells the personal tale of his account of the inhumanity and brutality the Nazis showed during the Holocaust. Night depicts the story of a young Jew from the small town of Sighet named Eliezer. Wiesel and his family are deported to the concentration camp known as Auschwitz. He must learn to survive with his father’s help until he finds liberation from the horror of the camp. This memoir, however, hides a greater lesson that can only be revealed through careful analyzation.

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