Elie Wiesel's Night: The Holocaust In The Holocaust

Imagine the world as you know it is no longer. The plain scentless air is now the stench of burned human flesh. You’re torn from your family not knowing their fate. You are no longer free to roam earth but now trapped in a torturous cage with the only escape being death. For Elie Wiesel and many other Jews of this time, this was their reality. It is estimated around 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust, each death leaving a scar on modern history, each death showing the monsters we all can be to our own people, or just revealing the monsters we truly are. Harsh changes were put on the Jews from the loss of basic human rights like freedom to the loss of lives. This inhumane treatment was done by their own kind, no sympathy, no empathy,

In a span of 10 years, the Holocaust killed over 7 million people, that’s just as much as the population of Hong Kong. In the book Night, by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel shares his experience on how he survived the Holocaust and what he went through. How he dealt with the horrors and even to how he felt of his dad’s death and how he saw himself after it was all over. As he tried to publish it he was constantly turned down due to the fact of how horrid and truful it was. He still tried and tried until it was finally published. This book shows how the Holocaust should be taught and not be forgotten, due to it being a prime example of human impureness. Humans learn off trial and error, how the Jewish population was affected, decrease in moral, and the unsettled tension are prime examples of such mistakes.

The Holocaust, a tragic time in history. Genocide committed by the hands of Adolf Hitler and his minions. A total death of around six million Jews. Some were lucky enough to escape to a life of freedom. Each survivor has its own unique story.

The Holocaust was a dreadful and truly awful time period, people were dehumanized, and shamed into losing their faith while they experienced tragic and awful death and pain. One Jewish survivor documents his experiences with death in his memoir, ‘Night’, Elie Wiesel. The novel is filled with his tales of death, dehumanization, and faith throughout the concentration camp, Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, the Jews lost their innocence that they once had. In the novel, Night, Elie, his father, and his fellow Jews lost their innocence through dehumanization, loss of faith, and experience of death and violence.

“Why dwell upon the study of the Holocaust when history is loaded with other tragedies? Because the Holocaust was unique. This is not to say that other tragedies were less horrible, only that the Holocaust was different and should not be compared and trivialized,” the author noted (Tarnor Wacks 9). A mere 71 years ago a defining feature of world history took place, in concentration camps across Eastern and Western Europe. 6 million Jews were ripped out of their homes and ultimately murdered.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never. ”(Wiesel, 34) This was written at the end of the first day. It really shows how dehumanization can make someone feel. After all that the men, women, and children have gone through they never thought of revenge, and only thought of bread.

The Holocaust is the most significant historical event that I have studied so far. This tragic event took place during World War II and only very few survivors lived to share their shocking experiences. I have read a few of these survivor’s stories, such as Night, by Elie Wiesel and it has personally impacted me and influenced my thinking in various ways. The Holocaust was the greatest act of hate, violence, and anti-semitism.

In the novel, “Night” Elie Wiesel communicates with the readers his thoughts and experiences during the Holocaust. Wiesel describes his fight for survival and journey questioning god’s justice, wanting an answer to why he would allow all these deaths to occur. His first time subjected into the concentration camp he felt fear, and was warned about the chimneys where the bodies were burned and turned into ashes. Despite being warned by an inmate about Auschwitz he stayed optimistic telling himself a human can’t possibly be that cruel to another human.

The Holocaust was a horrific tragedy which started in January of 1933 and ended in May of 1945, the Holocaust was the mass murder of millions of people. The word was derived from the Greek word that meant Sacrifice to the Gods (Steele 7), also called the Shoan which is the Hebrew word for catastrophe (Steele 7). So many countries took place in this 12-year genocide, including, “Germany, Italy, Japan, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, which were also known as the Axis Powers” (Steele 34). But, although there were all those countries they were all part of one larger group called the Nazis, were the ones who were killing all the different denominations of people. (Bachrach 58).

Of all the terrible events in history, the Holocaust may be the worst of them all. This tragedy was so terrible, I cannot think of the ones who instigated it as human beings. It was against many morals and standards that the world views today as common ethics. The most terrible part of this is, perhaps, how today’s new and younger generations are not sufficiently educated about this disaster. Although many younger generations do not know about the Holocaust, it’s importance should be emphasised in today’s society to learn from it, to realize that every human life is important, and to appreciate the blessings of the present day.

People endure hardships every day, but it is how they choose to react to them that is most important. One such hardship was the Holocaust, which was the murdering of millions of people at the Nazi concentration camps throughout the course of WWII. Eleven million Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies were killed during this genocide. Every survivor of these concentration camps was forced to decide between hiding or vocalizing the crimes they had seen committed, and many couldn’t find the strength to speak up. Thankfully, there were those such as Elie Wiesel, who didn’t rest.

Night Night by Elie Wiesel is his own accounts of the Holocaust. Elie uses his experiences to inform others of the atrocities he saw, so that history will not allow such events to be repeated in the future. His family is separated. He and his father are sent to Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel survived the Holocaust and his accounts of Nazi death camps portray a dark time for moral values.

It has been said that “Silence gives posthumous victory to Hitler.” Posthumous means “after death.” People may be indifferent to this subject now that they see it is long over, but if that is how people think, then Hitler may have won afterall. If people are silent then others will forget. If people forget, then they will no longer know the terrors the Holocaust has caused. If they forget the terrors, then Hitler will have won. Nobody will remember his horrifying deeds, nor will they remember the sheer terror felt by the Jews. People will refer to the Holocaust as a fallacy or a myth; that it never existed. There may even be a few rumors that Hitler was a gallant hero who tried to save people from the Jews since nobody knew the truth, for people were silent. On the other hand, one person chose not to stay silent.

It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.

“ … The world has had to hear a story it would have preferred not to hear - the story of how a cultured people turned to genocide, and how the rest of the world, also composed of cultured, remained silent in the face of genocide.” - Elie Wiesel. The man behind that quote is one of the few people in the world to survive one of the worst tragedies in human history, The Holocaust. An event in which millions of people perished, all because of a crazed dictator’s dream. Elie Wiesel who amazingly survived the horrors, documented his experience in his book, Night. He has a very specific message in his book that many of us can learn from. Elie Wiesel wrote Night to show that the silence and hesitation surrounding the Holocaust is was what allowed it to occur and continue for as long as it did,