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Research Paper On Night By Elie Wiesel

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The War Over Bread In Elie Wiesel’s Night, Eliezer's family and the other Jews in Sighet, Romania, are offered the opportunity to flee, but they do not take it. The whole Jewish population of Europe was then sent to concentration camps. Eliezer remains with his father in a camp known as Auschwitz, separated from his mother and sister. The family witnesses things nobody would believe at the camp if they told anyone outside of the camp. In order to survive, the prisoners would do anything. It was possible that murdered their own kind just for a tiny snack. Wiesel's story, Night had many prominent themes to show how the Jewish communities lives drastically changed. There were multiple instances where self-preservation was shown, it is a very prominent …show more content…

The starving, tortured, malnourished Jews of the concentration camp would’ve done anything to get food. They wouldn’t think twice about staying loyal to their family. “Meir, my little Meir! Don’t you recognize me… You’re killing your father… I have bread…for you too…for you too…” (Wiesel 101). Preserving one’s self can be brutal and harsh, the man in the quote had a piece of bread, and a boy fought him over it even though that boy was his son. The father was murdered by his son over a piece of bread. For someone to ensure their self-preservation, they will kill and destroy other people to survive. Even though the times were harsh, there is proof that decent people still exist. Eliezer was minding his own business when he accidentally witnessed Idek with a French girl. Eliezer was then beaten up for it. The French girl showed sympathy to Eleizer after he suffered. Then she comforted Eleizer and showed him she cared about him. “She was smiling her mournful smile as she slipped me a crust of bread. She looked straight into my eyes. I knew she wanted to talk to me but she was paralyzed by fear” (Wiesel 53). There are people out there who want to preserve the lives of people and try to help …show more content…

The Jews did not expect to normally live, peacefully, or live healthily. They forgot about who they were, and how they took care of themselves before. Their trauma affected their idea of self-preservation. A sense of normalcy did not exist for them anymore. “The instincts of self-preservation, of self-defense, of pride, had all deserted us. In one terrifying moment of lucidity, I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either.” (Wiesel 36). Self-preservation is something that everyone needs to survive. Without it, the Jews lost their idea of hope and human instincts. They forgot who they were and what it took to get to where they were. They lost their hope in life and what it

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575 Words | 3 Pages

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer Wiesel narrates the legendary tale of what happened to him and his father during the Holocaust. In the introduction, Wiesel talks about how his village in Seghet was never worried about the war until it was too late. Wiesel’s village received advanced notice of the Germans, but the whole village ignored it. Throughout the entire account, Wiesel has many traits that are key to his survival in the concertation camps.

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339 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout history books there are many cases where the Jews would kill each other, including family and friends, for food. Part of being alive brings an urge to survive. In the novels, Night by Elie Wisel and Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand the central theme that is displayed through both novels is the idea of Self-Preservation. Throughout the novel Night, self-preservation

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616 Words | 3 Pages

It first starts to become hard when elie’s family went to the concentration camp. But in the camp elie’s mother and sister ended up dieing because the Germans had no need for them and they germans weren't able to work them as hard. In the begining of them coming to the camp they were being fed quite well for being in a concentration camp at this time they were fed bread and soup for lunch and dinner but slowly through them being at the camp called “auschwitz” they were slowly being fed less and less portions so throughout it he was given just bread at one point in the middle then it went to just soup but the portions was littler and littler. In the book it talked about having a selection were the germans would pick the weak out of the strong . you would think this would give the living jews more food but in the case it is not true they were actually give less

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1074 Words | 5 Pages

In chapters 4 to 6 in the novel, “Night”, Elie Wiesel and his father continue to suffer in the grasp of the Germans. Eventually, all the Jews are moved to a new work camp, Buna, where they are overworked and undernourished, and resort to killing each other for pieces of bread. In his old home, Elie had never experienced brutality and inhumanity within it. Now, Elie and other Jews witness extreme violence and an absence of mercy that begins to erode their mental state; bringing most men to animalistic tendencies. In chapter 4, the Jews arrive in Buna.

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565 Words | 3 Pages

In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, we are told about the awful things that happened to the Jews during the Holocaust. Fifteen year-old Elie is a Jew who is strong in his faith. He and his family are taken from his home in Sighet to go to concentration camps. At these camps, they are all treated like animals. Lots of people struggle to survive or even die at these camps.

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454 Words | 2 Pages

From 1941-1945 over 6 million Jews had died at the hands of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel was one of few who survived these horrors. He wrote about his experiences in his book Night. In this scene from Night by Elie Wiesel, he and dozens of others have been stuffed into cattle cars on trains, and people are throwing bread into the cars to watch the people in the cars fight for it. Wiesel explores dehumanization to demonstrate how changed people become because of the horrors that they had seen and experienced.

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823 Words | 4 Pages

The train passed through German towns, and one a group of curious workers and passersby threw pieces of bread into the wagons. Elie saw, “an old man dragging himself on all fours” who had just “detached himself from the struggling mob. He was holding one hand to his chest” (Wiesel 101). As soon as food fell into the wagons, every person went all men for themselves. No one else mattered, as long as they could get some of the bread.

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758 Words | 4 Pages

They were trying to survive the germans dehumanization tactics being forced upon them. Therefore they tried to break the Jewish people's hope and spirit. Nazi’s use several oppressive and inhuman dehumanization methods to weaken the hope of the Jewish people. The first tactic used by the Nazi’s to try and dehumanize the Jewish people was to try and strip them from their identity.

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422 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer, the protagonist, is transported and moved to numerous concentration camps. His story, which is corresponding to Wiesel’s biography, is representative to the lives of a billion other Jews. Jews were stripped away from their families, beliefs, identity, and freedom. They could no longer express their faith in God or have the human right to live where desired. During the holocaust, nothing was fair, everything was dark and cruel.

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1169 Words | 5 Pages

There was extraordinary energy in them, sharpening their teeth and nails. A crowd of workmen and curious passers-by had formed all along the train. They had undoubtedly never seen a train with this kind of cargo” (101). This shows how desperate they are for food because they fight like animals to get some just to survive. They treat the Jews like animals, amusing themselves by putting the desperate, starving, dying Jews against each other.

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834 Words | 4 Pages

Starvation, death, anti- semitism, mistreatment, pain, forced labor, abuse -- all are situations Jewish people had to experience How did prisoners endure such hardships? Was it better to focus on one’s own survival or to work together to survive? In the memoir Night and the movie Schindler’s List, director Steven Spielberg and author Elie Wiesel explore this idea. They explore this idea by showing Jews helping other Jews to live and survive during the horrors of the Holocaust in Night and Schindler’s List.

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1405 Words | 6 Pages

For instance, the Germans' use of human ovens on page 25 left the Jews feeling so helpless that they recited the prayer of death for themselves, an unprecedented occurrence in Jewish history, “I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer of the death for themselves.” This quote reveals the Germans' ability to inflict generational trauma on the Jews by leading them directly to their death, stripping them of their identities and leaving them without hope. It sheds light on how the Germans' actions resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews and destroyed their sense of identity and belonging. Consequently, the Jews losing their faith, as seen on page 49, where Wiesel questions his own reality and expresses his outrage, frustration, and despair at the atrocities committed by the Germans,“Why, but why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled.

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750 Words | 3 Pages

“Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth." (Wiesel 83) Abandoned by the world, this quote demonstrates what happened to the Jews mentally from a lack of intervention. They lost what made them human, becoming empty. This goes back to Catechism’s respect for human life.

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478 Words | 2 Pages

Moreover, they loss their family members, and homes. Herzl also argues, that Jews are attacked and criticized everywhere they go, physically and mentally. Also he states that been put through a lot. So, they should be stationarized on their own land, and rule it politically and economically. This document shows that Rauschenbusch and Pope Pius X opinions that the human nature is corrupted, and cruel is right.

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1462 Words | 6 Pages

The Nazis may have not reached their goal of killing each and every Jew, but they canceled out the majority of the population and scarred those who did survive through the Holocaust. Their psychological manipulations succeeded in the sense that a Jewish individual, although not physically dead, was mentally drained. In the article, “Holocaust Survivors Had Skills to Prosper,” most of the Jews who survived suffered from PTSD. Goleman writes, “Close to two-thirds of the survivors said they got upset easily, more than half said they worried so much they had trouble sleeping, and a third said they felt afraid of many things.” These symptoms, prove that the psychological techniques used on the Jews heavily impacted their lives.

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