Loss Of Identity In Night By Elie Wiesel

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“...I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.” Elie Wiesel ends the novel Night off with a notably grave, yet powerful statement. One would say that this quote symbolizes the theft the Jews endured through the event known as the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel and his father were some of the many victims who suffered to the hands of the Nazis within the concentration camps. The torturous actions forged by Hitler and his army lead to the robbery of life, identity, and faith. Inside of the camps even the names of the Jews were taken away from them and replaced by numerical tattoos. There was no joy or worship inside of the camp, …show more content…

For example, Elie Wiesel is no longer called Elie Wiesel, he is referred to as A-7713, this is just one step of many that starts to dehumanize and overall strip the Jews of their very own human rights. “I thought of us as damned souls wandering through the void, souls condemned to wander through space until the end of time, seeking redemption, seeking oblivion, without any hope of finding either”(Wiesel, pg. 36). Elie was portraying how the Jew’s very own souls, essentially the most identifying aspect of a human, was being …show more content…

Silence was shown by more than just God, it was shown by the world watching this atrocity occur. “The world? The world is not interested in us. Today everything is possible, even the crematoria …" His voice broke.”(Wiesel pg. 33). Silence is an always present recurring theme in Night and may be the most powerful of the three symbols. To explain, silence is the only aspect that takes place through the entirety of the Holocaust and in Night. Readers can see that there was silence as Hitler took power and started to carry out his plans, there was silence when the Jews of Europe were being persecuted with antisemitism, silence was still seen as the Jews and dissidents began to be taken to concentration camps, silence was there when 6 million Jews were killed, and in the most breathtaking way silence was found in the hearts of all people after all of this has

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