Violence In Elie Wiesel's Night

Physical violence can cause serious psychological effects in teens, just as abuse left Jews in the concentration camps scarred for life, as shown in Elie Wiesel’s book Night. Things such as rape and being beaten can lead to horrible consequences of stress induced mental disorders such as PTSD. One of the worst types of physical violence that occured to the Jews is rape. Rape is defined as “sexual intercourse with a female forcibly and against her will. Attempts to commit rape by force or threat of force are also included (Dingwell).” While in the camps, many of the women were raped by the German guards or the Kapos. In Elie Wiesel’s account of his time in the camps, he talks about how he found his Kapo Idek sleeping with a young Polish girl (Wiesel 54). While rapes occurred in the camps, they also occur to teens in

This in turn causes them to “see violence as a way to settle disputes, and as adults they are more likely to abuse their own children (“Abuse and Abusive behavior”).” This shows how the cycle of abuse would continue from the abuser to the abused. In the camps, this was similar to how the Jews began to feel degraded and less of the humans that the Germans were, because of the way they were treated. In Night, Wiesel mentions how pipels, young boys studying under someone, became crueler than the actual adults in the camp because of the abusive environment that they grew up in(Wiesel 60). He even overheard a pipel once say to his crying father, “If you don’t stop crying at once I shan’t bring you any more bread. Do you understand(Wiesel 60).” The constant pressure they were under by higher authorities caused the pipels to lose all respect and care for even their own parents. Along with a loss of sympathy, many victims of violence abuse experience mental