Elie Wiesel's Night As A Symbol Of Oppression

From the small town of Sighet in Transylvania to the huge concentration camps of Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel, the author and victim of the book Night, the horrifying experience of the Holocaust. Wiesel is a 15 year old Jewish boy who was captured by the Germans or “Nazis” during WWII. He went through an overwhelming amount of trauma, like when he got separated from his mother and sisters and watching his father suffer an unbearable amount of pain that eventually killed him. The fact is, power is a tool that can corrupt itself and others, it can ruin people’s lives and it can do that without people even realizing it.

(Night, 18). When Elie gets to Auschwitz he realizes how evil the Nazi 's really are. Traumatized Elis sees children being dumped into the crematories and bursting into flames. At Auschwitz, it changes Elie 's mind and has a dramatic effect on him. "How could they burn the children?"

During the Holocaust, many people were faced with this moment when they stepped in a concentration camp. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, describes the horrors of focusing on your own survival. Certain acts provoke inhumane acts throughout the ordeal. A central theme in Night is, even though it’s difficult, people should value compassion over their own survival. For instance, the evil of a lack of compassion affects thousands of prisoner lives.

In Night one of the ways that the Jews were dehumanized was by abuse. There were beatings, “I never felt anything except the lashes of the whip...Only the first really hurt.” (Wiesel, 57) “They were forced to dig huge trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the Gestapo began theirs. Without passion or haste, they shot their prisoners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer their necks. Infants were tossed

They spent about 3 days at Gleiwitz and then they were transported to Buchenwald by train. There they are rescued by Americans and a resistance group that attacked the camp. Sadly Elie’s father died in Buchenwald before the rescue due to a sickness and being sent to the crematory. Dehumanization of the Jewish people in “Night” ,by Elie Wiesel, happened in a variety of ways and helped Hitler achieve his goal of damaging the view of Jewish people to the Germans. In “night” we see how the Jewish people are being oppressed as well as being dehumanized in so many ways.

After he was sent away to the concentration camps along with his father, things started to change. Elie starts to realize how this world is full of evil and cruelty and started to blame many things on his father and God. When Elie first saw the crematorium and saw that people were being burned in there he said “Never shall I forget that night... Never shall I forget those flames, which consumed my faith forever… Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live… Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust… Never shall I forget these things even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never. (34)”.

In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, there are many scenes that display the horrifying nature of the death camps in Germany that Jews were sent in. These terrifying scenes further explored the themes that lay hidden in this puzzle of a book. One such scene is when Elie’s father was ambushed by the leader of the group Idek for being in his way. Furthermore, his father lay there, taking the beating and being used as an example for the inmates. However, the key idea that is being displayed is the dehumanization that was shown.

In the book Night, Elie Wiesel describes his struggles as a Jew in a concentration camp using a depressing and serious tone, meant to reflect the horrific conditions the Jews were forced to face and the theme that adversity can cause a loss in faith. From the time Elie first arrived at the camp and heard everyone saying prayers, to when the young pipel was hung, and even when the Jews had to make the long, arduous, trek to the other camp, the reader could see his faith dwindling as he continued to question where his God was and why he wasn’t helping the Jews. Not only was a lack of faith evident in Elie himself, but the other Jews around him, even the priests, were having trouble believing in their God. Elie’s disheartened and somber tone

Elie Wiesel has been through hell and back, suffering from malnutrition, horrible weather conditions, and self torture. The Nazis dehumanized the Jews in Auschwitz by taking their humanity, making them fight for survival, and slaughtering and treating them like animals. During the beginning of the Holocaust Jews had been forced out of their homes, and had their clothes stripped off. Women and children were either raped or killed “dentist” that would call in Jews and pull out their gold teeth. Elie tried to avoid that by telling the Nazis he had been sick but eventually he was forced to have his teeth pulled out.

Night: Dehumanization “He was so terrible that he was no longer terrible. Only dehumanized” (F. Scott Fitzgerald). Jews were treated so badly that they began to act terribly but eventually they reached the point beyond repair and it was all due to dehumanization. The Holocaust took place in WW2, it was a horrific event that killed millions of Jews. Many Jews were taken from their homes and were killed, or were treated less than animals until death of starvation or exhaustion.

Dehumanization and food was a big influence on creating imagery in Wiesel 's memoir. One of the most impactful images is fire. In the train cart, Madame Schachter becomes overwhelmed and starts to scream about a huge fire that will kill them. But unfortunately she was right . “Women to the left and men the right” women and children were often sent straight to the gas chambers as they arrived at Auschwitz .

During 1944, Elie Wiesel was forced from his home to undertake a great trial, known by many as the Holocaust. After the grueling meat grinder, known by some as the Shoah, he had survived, and was able to write his experiences years after the event. In short, Wiesel wrote Night to remind people of the horrors and conditions he had experienced within the concentration camps. Years after the Holocaust occurs, Wiesel shows the harsh treatment on him and his peers, enforced by the Schutzstaffel, such as working with great starvation and tiredness. The writing reveals the feelings of oppressed; starved; weakening men under the rule of fascist Nazis.