“We now have a voice for those who don’t.” During the Holocaust, seven million people died, six million which were Jews, and they will never be able to tell their stories. Emotional and physical heartbreak was created and needed to be recognized to express the truth. Elie Wiesel wrote Night to show his journey throughout The Holocaust. He published Night twenty three years later, terrified to relive the moments in his writing. But he knew somebody needed to stand up for the deceased. Somebody needed to be their voice. The distress was all around and needed to be told. The Holocaust is the worst event in history that dehumanized human beings, causing millions of deaths that can never happen again. We need to be their voice to express the truth
In Elie Wiesel’s “Night”, Elie begins the novel living a normal life in the small town of Sighet in Transylvania. He lives with a family of six, with his mother, father, and three sisters. The story picks up quickly after the Nazis move in, first taking away the town’s rights to own any gold, jewelry, or any valuables, then no longer have the right to restaurants, cafes, synagogues, or to even travel by rail. Soon the town of Sighet then came the ghettos. It was prohibited from leaving their homes after six o 'clock in the evening. Then two Ghettos were created in Sighet, one larger one in the center of town and another smaller one a few alleys away. Ghettos were primarily used to keep the Jews from escaping, and to constantly manage their location. Soon after life began to return to normal until transport vehicles started to come to ship off the Jews to concentration camps. In less then a week of the arrival of the transport vehicles all the people of Sighet were in cable cars on their route to concentration camps. Upon the arrival of the Jews the Nazis had prepared a cruel arrangement of steps to properly manage the Jews. The Nazis were determined to have their identity be stripped away from them, starting with the choice of clothes being worn, forced to wear prison uniforms. Next they were forced to shaved their heads and every hair on their body, losing the choice of appearance. Finally the Nazis gave each person a tattoo of a number
During the time of 1933-1945 the Nazi’s implemented a series of dehumanizing actions towards the jewish. In the book “Night” by Eliezer Wiesel, Wiesel discusses his life before being deported to a concentration camp, his experience in concentrations camps, and how he was finally liberated. Through Wiesel, we are able to witness the way these unfortunate jewish people were stripped of their rights, experimented on and objectified.
Hunger was one of the greatest problems; families would fight each other for food rations tearing everybody apart. For prisoners during the Holocaust, meal times were the most important times of the day. In the morning they would usually get a ‘meal’, which consisted of coffee or tea. For lunch they would have gotten watery soup, if they even got the opportunity to eat anything during lunchtime. That depended on if they worked or were busy and if their sergeant would let them eat. Lucky prisoners would find food lying around the camps or they would have people in their workplaces sneak them food. At night, prisoners would be given bread and a small piece of meat or cheese. The bread they were given was supposed to last them all night until the morning, so people would try to hide them in their beds, while they were asleep. The small rations were just meant to keep the prisoners alive so they weren’t completely starving. Many thousands of prisoners died from starvation or the illnesses caused by the lack of nutrition. Unfortunately, in the ghettos there was not any stores or shacks to buy things, so the prisoners had to attempt to steal the food. The prisoners would trade anything and everything in order to get food. The amount of food in the ghettos that was allowed varied from day to day depending on how the prisoners acted towards their sergeants. There were some times, when no food was available to any of the
The Jews were stripped from their basic god given human rights. The Jews were isolated in fenced towns called ghettos. Wiesel’s friend Moishe Chaim Berkowitz described his travels in Hungary and encounter with antisemitism, “The Jews of Budapest live in an atmosphere of fear and terror. Anti-Semitic acts take place everyday, in the streets, on the trains. The fascists attack Jewish stores, synagogues. The situation is becoming very serious…” (Night, Wiesel, 9). Soon after they were prohibited from owning gold, jewelry or any valuables and prohibited from being anywhere after six o’clock, both of these edicts came with the penalty of death if not followed. Jews had lost the basic right of freedom and religious freedom, one night referred to as as Kristallnacht where German forces and civilians smashed the windows of Jewish owned stores, buildings, and synagogues. Many died and were incarcerated in labor camps on this
World War II was a brutal time. Many innocent people were tortured, and this was a very real situation for the victims held captive in the Warsaw ghetto. Individuals were starved and put in a place of devastation and depression. Contributing factors, like sickness and disease, forced human beings to figure out ways to survive. In the book Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, people used survival skills such as stealing and supporting the Jackboots.
In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie, a thirteen year old Jewish boy, lives in Transylvania, Hungary with his family. Elie practices his religion by going to mosques and praying. However on the seventh day of Passover, the Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community. One of the big impacts they had was going to the unsanitized ghettos. In the ghettos the Jews were trapped in a big area of homes that were surrounded by walls. Elie and his family were lucky enough to stay in the same home they had owned, but they had to share it with other Jews. After the ghettos the Jews had to go to concentration camps. Elie and his family were the last section to leave the ghettos which is actually a huge advantage. The first group of leaving the
It all began from the point the SS officers barged into their homes and told them they would be leaving their homes and going to the ghetto. “The time has come… you must leave all this…”(Wiesel 16) They had to leave all their belongings behind believing one day they would be back, but in the reality of the holocaust it was most likely they would never be back. In a way when they left all their belongings behind , but they also left many of their stories, identities but biggest of all their soul. Of course being in the ghetto was a horrible experience but none of them imagined that only the worst was yet to come . After being in the Ghetto for a short period of time they had to be transported in the trains to the concentration camps.“(Wiesel 22) The Hungarian police made us climb into the cars,
The Jews were moved to the ghettos, because Hitler pushed the Jews to move to the east, then they concore move of the east and move them more to the east. Then “there was no more room for them to move to the east, so they built ghettos for them to live” (Byers 32). But his true intentions were to “separate the Jewish people from manly Germans and also other races” (Allen 37).
The goal of ghettos established as temporary; however, they lasted for days, weeks, or years.
These ghettos were the worst part of the cities that the Nazis took over which they converted into living areas for captured Jews. “They used these places to “store” Jews they didn 't have room for at the concentration camps yet” (Bachrach 38). The Nazis had one very big ghetto in Warsaw, Poland called, simply, the Warsaw Ghetto (Bachrach 39). Warsaw was the biggest ghetto that the Nazis had but the Jews used that to their advantage. The Warsaw ghetto was one of the only ghettos at which a successful escape attempt was ever
Have you ever thought about what the Japanese population during world war ll felt like, or what they went through when they were forced into internment camps? Well back then or maybe even now people didn’t think about how horrible it would have been for all of those people in the camps, or they just didn’t care. No one should have to go through such an awful experience like that, it was wrong what the U.S. did.
The Jews were taken by surprise. They had a false sense of security on what was happening. In document B paragraph 2 its states “ That They were brought into the ghetto and were much better fed than we were”. This created a false sense of security because there treating them better than the outside world. In document B it says “they had more supplies and Jewish police. If your own people are watching over you are not gonna be afraid.
we still have today and which someone knowledgeable on the situation would call “ghettoization” (Jackson).
In the ghettos, living conditions were very harsh. There were ridiculous rules like “no hands in your pockets” (Altman The Holocaust Ghettos 42). The ghettos could be described as “crowded and unsanitary living conditions” (Blohm Holocaust Camps 10), with six to seven people living in each room (Adler 57). The ghettos were always sealed, with a wall, barbed wire, or posted boundaries (Altman the Holocaust Ghettos 14). Around the ghettos they were always guarded, if any Jew tried to escape, they would be killed (Adler 57). There were very small amounts of food and most people had to search the streets for any little food they