Elie Wiesel Night Survival

Aiden Toms
Mrs. S Chernishenko
ELA B 30
April 27, 2023

Survival and Triumph of The Human Spirit

Night, written by Elie Wiesel, is a memoir that thoroughly explains the psychological damage that Jewish citizens experienced during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel, better known as Eliezer throughout the memoir, explains the different torturous events he, as well as other Jews, had to experience during Adolf Hitler’s reign. When the Germans put Jews into Ghettos, most of them were in denial and thought something this cruel could not possibly be happening. However, as time passed, reality set in for the Jews and they concluded that this was truly happening and that this was only the beginning. Jews were then stripped of their faith and identity to be

Once people started to realize what was going to happen, they did not believe it. A lot of the Jews were in denial as they did not believe something so terrible could be happening to them. The Jewish community believed that their god would direct them on the right path and save them from this evil. However, these torturous and cruel conditions continuously got worse, which started to sink fear within them. While in the Ghetto sitting with her family and other people, Eliezer's mother states, “I’ve got a premonition of evil.” (Wiesel 13) Eliezer's mother said this when she knew that the Germans were going to do torturous things to the Jewish community within the concentration camps and knew it was just going to get worse. Hitler’s plan was working and ended up not only scaring the Jewish community but started to make Jews second guess who they were as human beings and who they were

By not only torturing and killing them in horrific ways but also trying to strip Jews of their religion. This broke the spirits of Jewish people and even made them question if their god was real, which is exactly what Hitler was trying to accomplish. Eliezer overheard a man standing behind him state the following, “For God’s sake, where is God?” (65) This expresses the emotion the Jews were experiencing while their humanity and religion were being stripped away from them. Eliezer further explains, “...And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God’s silence.” (69) This shows how Eliezer stopped following one of his religious customs as he thought his god was sitting there, watching the torture unfold. Eliezer could not stand it anymore and chose to live instead of following his religion. Jewish citizens had to experience this every day, and a variety of other inhumane events both in the Ghettos and in the concentration camps, which led to most Jews suffering from horrendous