Elie Wiesel\'s Night When We

¶ … Elie Wiesel's Night

When we discuss the Holocaust, most people focus on the sheer number of lives lost. Over 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. The number seems enormous, not simply because it is a huge number, but because the deaths were without a real purpose. Deaths in war are inevitable and understandable, so that 6 million lives lost in combat would be a sad tragedy, but an understandable tragedy. The 6 million Jews that died in the Holocaust are heartbreaking because there does not seem to have been any rational explanation for their deaths. Killing Jews served no constructive purpose for the Nazis. There were side benefits from the concentration camp programs; they transferred Jewish wealth to government control and allowed the country to vilify Jews as scapegoats at a time when Germany was suffering and the average German really needed a scapegoat. Yet, the deaths still see so difficult to understand, when the same goals could have been accomplished simply by the wholesale incarceration of the Jews, much like the Americans did to Japanese-Americans in our own World War II internment camps.

Reading something like this excerpt from Night reminds me that the deaths were not about killing Jews. They were about the wholesale intimidation and dehumanization of a huge group of people. This scene reveals so much about the psychology behind this behavior. Here this Nazi, the Kapo Idek, wielded his power over the Jews under his control in a vicious manner. I characterize Idek as a Nazi, even though I cannot tell from the passage whether he was actually a Nazi or was a Jew put in charge of a workgroup by the Nazis. Before even discussing the public whipping of a young boy, I have first have to comment on the sexual assault on the young Polish girl. I characterize it as an assault, even though Wiesel's description does not give enough details to determine whether the activity seemed consensual or forced, though the fact that the girl covered her breasts when Wiesel appeared makes it seem as if there was an element of shame with him seeing her naked body that did not exist with Idek. However, no girl in a concentration camp could consent to sex with a captor. The entire scenario is coercion, and this scene describes a man using his power over a huge group of people in order to have sex with at girl. Furthermore, that Wiesel describes her as a girl rather than a woman is telling. The image in my head is a young girl of 13 or 14, far too young for sexual activity, coerced into doing something, perhaps for the promise of food for her or her family. It is just a heartbreaking image. This makes her frantic attempt to cover her breasts and cover her shame all the more poignant, as one can only imagine how she felt like a traitor to her people to be caught having sex with a Nazi. Then, when one considers how many young girls must have been put in this same position, over and over again, forced to choose between impossible alternatives: protecting their families or taking a moral stand with their people, it just becomes overwhelming.