What Does Shlomo Symbolize In Night By Elie Wiesel

Eliezer: Eliezer is the narrator of Night and the supposed representation of the author. Eliezer is a Jewish teenager living in X during this story and the account is told from his perspective. Eliezer’s journey from a teenager being taught in the ways of his religion before the Holocaust makes him question his teachings and his very faith in a God who would allow such atrocities. Despite the horrors that he endures, Eliezer manages to cling to his own humanity and his love for his father.

Shlomo: Shlomo is Eliezier’s father. He is portrayed as a community leader and as a good father. Shlomo deteriorates in body and mind throughout the course of the story as described by Eliezer, but his love for his son remains constant and the relationship

He describes his parents as shopkeepers and that he has one younger and two older sisters. Eliezer describes his interest in the Jewish religion and how Moishe becomes his teacher of Jewish faith and mysticism. Then he describes the deportation of Moishe as a “foreign Jew” out of the village and his subsequent return where he tells of Jews being massacred and his own escape but is not believed by the villagers. He describes how the Jews in Eliezer’s hometown basically scoffed at Hitler’s public desire to exterminate Jews from Germany which hints at the denial that was alive and well at that time. Multiple reports of the atrocities that were befalling Jews were brought to the town but were not taken seriously and did not prompt them to flee. The gradual restriction of freedoms and systematic dehumanizing of the Jews is described. The formation of the ghettos where the Jews were forced to reside and then eventually how they were forced to board cattle cars and depart for the concentration camp. Completed Dec 20,

Eliezer realizes that Rabbi Elihau’s son has abandoned him knowingly and he resolves that he should never behave that way to his own father. The Front is following close behind the Germans and the prisoners as they have evacuated. The prisoners are given a ration of bread but no water so they use their spoons to eat snow from the backs of each other for water. The prisoners are crammed onto rail cars of 100 now (they were 80 before) because they are so skinny. Completed Dec 23, 2022.

Section 7: The prisoners are tightly packed in the rail cars and are told by the SS to throw out all of the dead. For a moment, Eliezer fears that his father has died on this trip. Eliezer describes that the prisoners were given no food and survived on snow. A barbaric scene of men killing each other over crusts of bread thrown by villagers as they passed through town in the rail cars is described. Eliezer flashes forward to his life after the war and seeing an affluent lady doing the same thing and he asks her to stop. Completed Dec 23,