Why Did Elie Wiesel Survive In Night

Perseverance Amidst Darkness: Elie Wiesel's Survival in Concentration Camps and the Enduring Psychological Ramifications

Past tense

Yong Lee

History 005: West Civilization Since 1648

Professor Katherine Becker

July 13, 2023

Word Count:

Elie Wiesel, a Jew born in the town of Sighet, Romania, was one of the few survivors of the horrific genocide that is known today as the Holocaust. His book Night is a memoir of his experience in the nightmarish Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, which works as a primary source to provide insight into how horrible the conditions were inside those camps. Wiesel’s survival in these camps was due to a combination of his mental strength, his mind’s determination to survive even when his

These factors alone would not have guaranteed his survival, because there were people in the camps that were physically stronger, received more support from other inmates, and more determined to escape the camp, and so it was a combination of these, along with chance, that made him survive. This experience left severe psychological effects on his mind, such as a loss in his faith and symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as a result of the inhuman treatment he received and the sickening acts of cruelty and savagery he witnessed while in the concentration camps.

In order to fully understand how Elie Wiesel survived and what effects the treatment he endured in the concentration camps left on his mind, all a person has to do is read Night, an account of his experience during the Holocaust and an important primary source when understanding what the environment was like in the camps. Night was published in 1956, first translated into English in 1960 and re-translated by Elie Wisel’s wife, Marion Wiesel, in 2006. It starts with him at 12 years of age, in the small Romanian town of Siget where he lives with his parents and three sisters. The year is 1941, and there was not yet much presence of war. Then, without warning, “all foreign Jews were expelled

At the first inspection in Birkenau by Dr. Mengele, Wiesel reveals that he is fifteen years old, and in good health. This age would have statistically given him a higher than average chance of surviving the Holocaust, according to a study published in the European Journal of Population on the survival of Jews from Amsterdam; after Jews under 5 years old at 28.3%, the age group of 15-30 years old was the most likely to survive. While Elie Wiesel was from Romania, not the Netherlands, this data still applies, because it would be expected that Jews aged 15-30, who are in their peak physical fitness, would be more likely to survive than most other age groups, such as 50+, and this study supports that theory. In comparison, his father, who was 50 years old, had more trouble coping physically with the harsh demands of life in the concentration camps. One instance of this was during and after the journey to Buchenwald. While Elie Wiesel was relatively fine, considering the fact that he had gone days without any food or water, his father had been too exhausted to even take a hot shower, something they had not done for over a week. Instead, he chose to lie down in the snow, even though he had warned his son against doing exactly that a few days before. This camp was the same one where Wiesel’s father eventually died from dysentery,