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Everyone marveled at it. We should no longer have before our eyes those hostile faces, those hate-laden stares" (Wiesel, p9).
Chances of surviving the camps depended largely on whether one was deported to a work camp or a death camp and whether one was of sufficient age and physical vitality to be of some service to the German war effort as a slave laborer. Even in the work camps, those who were weaker, older, and less susceptible to extreme deprivation and abuse succumbed to the many chronic illnesses that afflicted prisoners living in the most unsanitary and inhumane conditions imaginable.
Wiesel also describes how survival under such extreme conditions required one to give up some of the most basic human emotions and concern for others, even others in the same circumstance; this even applied to Wiesel's...
But I
had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched for it, I might perhaps have found something like -- free at last" (Wiesel, p38).
Ultimately, the book presents the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust in such a way as to ensure that an appropriate record remains for future generations long after all of those with first-hand knowledge of the horrific atrocities perpetrated by the what was then, arguably the worlds most cultured and "civilized" society.
Night by Elie Wiesel was first published in English in 1960 and gave the most chilling and most faithful account of his experiences during the Holocaust. We have heard a lot about concentration camps and how Jews were made to suffer simply because of their religion, however this book gives us something deeper to think about. The book studies the Holocaust experience in the light of Jewish beliefs and the
This apathetic sentiment even envelops the narrator, as the following quotation demonstrates by showing that Eliezer knew that "the child was still alive when I passed him." Despite this fact, the narrator does nothing to help the child due to his extreme apathy. However, the narrator's apathy is proven most effectively by his silent answer to the question as to God's presence, which the subsequent quotation suggests. "Where is
Night by Elie Wiesel Though it is called a novel, Night (Wiesel 1982) is actually a memoir about Wiesel's experiences as a young, devout Jewish boy who is forced by World War II Nazis into a concentration camp, along with his family. The main character, Eliezer, is actually Wiesel, and through his descriptions and thoughts about his life before, during and after the concentration camps, Wiesel illustrates ways that people may
This is why he fled his adoptive parents' home, and confidently volunteered to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. Because he believed he had the ability to outwit fate he confidently issued a proclamation to Thebes, telling the suffering citizens he would be sure to punish whomever was the cause of the plague -- and unwittingly condemning himself. But in "Oedipus at Colonus," Oedipus is a humbled man. He
"And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now." (Night 5) Even as they were taken to death camps, many Jewish individuals continues to believe that God was with them and that they needed to act in agreement with his plan, despite the fact that it involved them having to suffer. While Wiesel started to doubt God's plan, he continued
In this case, Wiesel attempted to trust God the way his mentor and the other religious villagers did, but each family was moved and deported. Moshe the Beadle escaped just to be labeled a lunatic, and the hope in God proved futile. In such circumstances, the most faithful of people would remind themselves to take joy in suffering for their faiths, to remind themselves that the Bible gives instructions