Book Report On Night By Elie Wiesel

Human rights, something that was written down for the world after the catastrophic second world war. Most know of the genocide of ethnic groups that were deemed inferior to Nazi Germany more specifically Jews, which were senselessly exterminated in camps such as Auschwitz and Birkenau. After the war the newly formed United Nations voted and passed The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, under this declaration lists thirty unalienable rights shared by all human beings. However, these rights can’t be actualized for everyone on the planet, both before and after the UDHR was written. The reasons being is that firstly, when people are pressed into a survival situation they are not thinking about the rights of everyone, but instead

Secondly, countries that are wrought with either war or civil strife are entirely dependent on securing victory over protecting these rights. And finally, even those who have pledged to uphold the UDHR went back on their word. For our first point we look at the conflict that inspired the writing of the UDHR.

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the book follows Elie’s experiences in Auschwitz and Birkenau and how he survived in these camps. The violations post mortem in the UDHR include all thirty but specifically, we will be looking at the second and fifth rights which state that there can be no discrimination or torture in any form. Wiesel recalls a disturbing scene in which several people were hanged for planning an uprising. However, Wiesel recalls the final plight of a young boy who wasn’t killed immediately. “But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range” (65). This disgusting act perpetrated by those who ran the camp, is a clear violation of the fifth human right which in summary

The definition of a child solider is any child under the age of 18 recruited by a state or non-state armed group and used as fighters, cooks, suicide bombers, and human shields among other things. However regardless of what role the child plays, it is a clear violation of the fourth and twenty-sixth articles. The fourth states that there shall be no slavery of any person while the twenty-sixth protects the right of people (specifically children in this case) to get an education. The former applies to child soldiers as most of them are press ganged into joining and are then treated horribly. In the book When Elephants Fight by Eric Walters and Adrian Bradbury goes into detail about the reality of child soldiers in western Africa. In one interview with a person who witnessed the child soldiers in action described it, “The men-no they weren’t all men, some were barely boys…the boys walked down the line, screaming, yelling, threatening to harm or kill anyone as they passed” (15). In first world countries this concept of children threatening to kill people is a distant thought, but for the people of western Africa this is a present and very real danger. For those asking how it is a violation of the fourth article, these children are after recruited are usually kept in service until there captured, escape, or killed. In a way a child soldier is cheep and reliable soldier that is discarded just as