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. Of course, the vignette is not from the girl's perspective, but from a young Elie's perspective. He was not trying to be a trouble-maker. He was looking through a warehouse, desperate to find a scrap of bread when he encountered Idek having sex with this girl. His punishment...
The punishment was wholly unnecessary; he was not trying to find Idek and discover what he was doing, and he did not seem to pose a threat that he would reveal what had occurred. In fact, by bringing attention to the issue with a public whipping, Idek is the one who made it clear that Elie had discovered him doing something he should not have been doing. The whipping occurred because it could. Combined with the forced sex with the young Polish girl, the whipping was very resonant of what is known of slavery as practiced in American prior to the Civil War; physical abuse and humiliation just because it was a possibility. Taken as a whole, the incident described makes me heartsick. I would like so very much to believe that human beings simply could not do these types of things to one another, but, time and time again, history demonstrates that not only can they, but they do, and they seem to enjoy it.
.. We appointed a Jewish Council, a Jewish police, an office for social assistance, a labor committee, a hygiene department -- a whole government machinery. 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
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
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