...Faith Challenged by Evil Historic Event Can a person maintain a stronger growing faith and untouched humanity ideas during an evil historic event like the Holocaust? Elie Wiesel’s book, Night, will answer this question. Throughout history humanity has faced numerous tragic event caused either by nature or human beings, both of God’s creations. The Holocaust, which means “sacrifice by fire”, began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. During the Holocaust the Jews were the most affected. The Nazis killed eleven million Jews, almost two-thirds of all the Jewish population living in Europe. Jews were not the only ones the Holocaust targeted; Gypsies, homosexuals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also victims of Hitler’s plan. In recent years, events like The Twin Towers terrorist attack in 2001 and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami have brought enormous suffering to the world, suffering that can somehow be compared to the one lived during the Holocaust. Continuing is the analysis of Elie Wiesel’s horrific experiences during the Holocaust. Did these experiences affect his faith? Was his perception of humanity ideas impacted? The book Night starts describing Elie’s faith as one indestructible. As young as he was he had deep knowledge of Jewish mysticism studies. Elie believed in God; a God of love and unlimited power. He was told that God is the master creator of all world’s wonders and that these wonders where the emanation of the divine world. Elie concluded that if God...
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...throughout Night. Eliezer Wiesel presents the Jewish faith in a moment of extreme darkness however, what gives him the courage and strength to continue to live is his connection with religion and his relationship with God. Initially Elie shows strong devotion, then becomes disillusioned with God’s power, and ultimately redefines the position God holds in his life. In the beginning, Elie Wiesel’s relationship with God in Night shows strong devotion. Wiesel made spirituality inherent to all activities, wished to spend his life focused around Judaism, and devoted all his free time and energy on religious studies. Wiesel believed that religion was a basic survival need, showing that he followed his religion instinctively. When asked why he prayed, Wiesel couldn’t think of a proper answer and thought, “…strange question, why did I live, why did I breathe?”. Wiesel maintained confidence in religion as the situation deteriorated. Wiesel and his people gave thanks to God for survival, keeping hope that God was putting them through a test of hardships what would keep them alive if they kept their faith. When they had arrived at Auschwitz, they thanked God and were able to regain their confidence because, “Here was a sudden release from the terrors of the previous nights”. Wiesel thanked God for the little things that helped him because he wanted a sense of protection and clung to the belief that God watched over them and helped them survive the challenges he faced. When Wiesel’s new shoes...
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...Appearance vs. Reality In the novel Night (1956), Elie Wiesel illustrates the horror that he faces through the Holocaust. Wiesel’s drive to get out of the concentration camp with his father alive causes him to be directed through all of these challenges. When it seems that everything is lost time after time again, he starts to lose himself and his humanity. Wiesel’s detailed descriptions of the Jews denying their inevitable truth that had shown right in front of them is also later shown that not only did the Jewish community, not face their own reality, however Elie Wiesel finds it hard to face his reality through this tough time. The play Oedipus Rex (420) by (Sophocles) also demonstrates the tragedy of how sensitive our mentality can...
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...Brian Levin believes that the denial of the Holocaust pulls in people who are right-wing and anti-Semitic to conspiracy theories. People who are anti-Semitic are prejudice against Jews in every way. Do they truly believe the Holocaust did not happen because of insufficient evidence, or just because they do not like Jews? Elie Wiesel is not the only survivor to write a book about his experience. Anne Frank wrote a diary while in the Holocaust. Her diary was found later and then published. Extremists who deny the Holocaust believe Frank’s diary was a forgery, and they also believe the six million Jews who died was an exaggeration. Before the Holocaust began in 1933, there were approximately 9.5 million Jews living in Europe. If two-thirds of Jews were annihilated during the Holocaust, would not that equal out to nearly six million Jews that died? (USHMM). When the Holocaust ended in 1945, it caused a rapid growth of learning in fields such as history, philosophy, and literature. Holocaust denial in North America is important to extremists because it includes the...
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...attained from a human being, their outlook on life becomes devious. Having a positive on life conceives comfort in many people’s lives. When an outside fury comes along and changes someone’s life, his or her attitude is going to change drastically. In three books I’ve read, “Night”, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, each struggle with the society they are dealt with. To be more specific, each main character has to struggle for freedom in the society that is surrounding them. When someone is enforced to go against his or her accustomed state of life, a negative state of mind is most likely going to be perceived through that person’s actions. In Elie Wiesel’s novel “Night”, a gloomy conduct is shown towards freedom, faith, and life. One of the most important rights as a human being is the capability to live willingly. Freedom gives people the right...
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...Elie Wiesel’s Break Of Silence One of the most dreadful events in the history of mankind: the Holocaust during World War II. The holocaust was a genocide of Jews, homosexuals, mentally handicapped, and crippled. The holocaust killed more than six million Jews alone. Elie Wiesel is a Jew who went through the terror of the holocaust and its concentration camp. He tells his story in his book Night. Night reveals how Wiesel lost his family, faith, and innocence to the evil of mankind during the holocaust. Wiesel believes it is important for people today to read this book because they need to be shown how important it is not to keep silent and let something like the holocaust happen again. Elie has some of the most marvelous figurative language throughout the novel, starting off with some metaphors. Elie and the rest of the block are running to a peculiar concentration camp, with no rest Elie starts having speculation of what will happened if he stops running. “ A great ideal wave of men came rolling onward and would have crushed me like an ant” (87). No analysis How does this relate to the author’s purpose? The next phase awkward phrase is about when there was two cauldrons of soup in the middle of the road with no one to guard it. “Two lambs with hundreds of wolves lying in the wait for them. Two lambs without a shepherd, free for the taking. But who would dare?” (59) Have you ever been so mad at someone that everytime you talk to them you questioned them with anger or say...
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...“The yellow star? So what? It’s not lethal…” (Wiesel 11). But the yellow star eventually would be the downfall and ultimate fate of many European Jews, including multitudes of teenager Eliezer Wiesel's friends and family members. In the memoir Night, Wiesel’s adolescent years are stained by the devilish mark of Hitler’s death camps, where prisoners endure torture and demise on a routine basis. As he witnesses son against father and friend against friend, he must control himself to not turn against his ailing dad. So how does Wiesel escape turning against his only remaining family member? Despite seeing the treacheries around him, Wiesel somehow manages to keep moral ground, even up to his father's sickly death. With the power of faith, family, and community, Wiesel keeps himself from betraying his father. Elie Wiesel’s naturally faithful self is a key part in his struggle to keep morality. Before being sent off to the concentration camps,...
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...Night Essay Prompt 1 Why did Elie Wiesel choose to rename the book “Night” rather than keep the previous title “The World Remained Silent” for his story of his Holocaust experience? The both fit the book well but Night has a more figurative meaning compared to “The World Remained Silent” which is very literal and you don’t have to really think about why the title is what it is. I think Night is a much better choice of a title because it has multiple meanings of what it could be and the reader can decide and choose their own interpretation on it rather than having a set meaning which removes a lot of the effect of having a title that the reader can create their own meaning for and have it mean something to them rather than it being just a title....
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...The Psychology of Evil: Night "Nobody is ever just a refugee. Nobody is ever just a single thing. We dehumanize people when we reduce them to a single thing and this dehumanization is insidious and unconscious," said Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, and former refugee. As Adichie said, dehumanizing, being treated like animals, is a horrendous thing and it has happened in the past and continues to happen today. History is full of situations where victimizers abused their power resulting in deindividualized and dehumanized victims. Such as Elie Wiesel was not just prisoner A-7713, he was a human being as were others put into concentration camps and many who have been oppressed and dehumanized. In Philip Zimbardo’s experiment the guards dehumanized and deindividualized the prisoners (Zimbardo). In Night the prisoners were dehumanized when Dr. Mengele made them...
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...adapted to their environment with the extinction of others (Wikipedia: Survival of the Fittest). In Night by Elie Wiesel, in face of extermination the Jews of Sighet commit uncharacteristic ‘sins’. Fear had forced silence, fear had forced evil deeds and fear had turned the Jews against one another. The cruelties of natural selection is described in Night by Elie Wiesel, portraying the breaking of the human spirit, damaging faith in humanity, family, and God. Humanity, an important theme in Elie Wiesel’s memoire is portrayed as an ever changing proposition. The Jews of Sighet, and most importantly Elie, is seen struggling with his conscious based on the inhumane acts of oppression he has witnessed. In the beginning his faith is abundant and is evident through his trust in the German’s and disbelief in Moshie the Beadle (his mentor). “He told me what had happened to him and his companions. …The Jews were ordered to get off and onto waiting trucks. The trucks headed toward a forest. ...Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for the machine guns” (Wiesel 6). Although, Elie did not believe Moshie at first the nightmares described by his mentor became a reality when he had first entered the concentration camps. The traumatizing events witnessed by Elie had caused him to question his faith in the human race while stripping him of reason to live. It was hard for him (Elie) to comprehend that the world would allow the systematic extermination of one race; his conversations...
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...Introduction Elie Wiesel’s existence begins in Hungary where he is born in a Jewish slum. Life takes a different lane when he lands in concentration camps under the Nazi regime. The period from when he becomes a teenager sees him face the harsh life where his father denies him the opportunity to pursue Cabbala. Elie gets his own master, Moishe the Beadle who significantly tells him to spend time pursuing God through questions and not trying to comprehend His answers. "I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions." (Wiesel 30). Moishe is among the first prisoners taken by Germans and when he manages to escape and tell people of what Germans were doing to prisoners, he is taken for insane. There then follows a trail of events where he undergoes a series of bizarre encounters including the loss of his sisters and mother. This was a very trying time for Elie in which life drives out the innocence from him completely. In the concentration camps, where they are taken to as Jews, they are subjected to incessant torture and Elie witnesses babies burning in furnaces. The aim of this essay is trying identifying various ideas in the book written by Wiesel, identifying their changes, and at last draft a conclusion from these ideas as well as marking a significant change in his life since it takes a toll on his personal relationship with God. Changes in ideas about God and Humanity by Elie Wiesel From an innocent religious boy, Wiesel...
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...War II. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, he states, “…in their early days of their accession to power, the Nazis in Germany set out to build a society in which there simply would be no room for Jews. Toward the end of their reign, their goal changed: they decided to leave behind a world in ruins in which Jews would seem never to have existed” (viii). The shock and horror does not lessen regardless of how many times a book or article is read or a movie watched about the Holocaust. Learning about the horrible, dark period from 1935 – 1945 is important in several ways. On one hand, it has been said we must learn about the past in order not to relive it. However, we are also told not to dwell in the past. When studying the Holocaust, both adages have truth. Chilling questions occur when learning about the Holocaust. They are questions that Elie Wiesel repeated in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Wiesel says he remembers asking his father, “Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?” (118). Millions of Jews were killed by overwork, starvation, torture, and cold blooded murder just because they were a different race and religion. Wiesel urges readers not to forget. Wiesel states, “To forget would not be only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time”(xv). Wiesel later states, “What I do know is that there is ‘response’ in responsibility. When we speak of this era of evil and darkness...
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...Review of “Night” Marcie Mills In 1944 Europe, Elie Weisel and his family are forced into a concentration camp because they are Jewish. When they arrive, Elie and his father are separated from his mother and sisters. As this is happening, he sees Jews that were gassed being thrown into burning mass graves. A Jew's daily ration was a small bowl of thin soup and a small piece of bread. The Jews are forced to run from camp to camp naked; being shot if they stop or slow down. Elie's father gets sick and Elie shares his ration to keep his father alive. Will Elie ever see his mother and sisters again? Will Elie get out alive? The author engages the reader by making them feel like Elie or another Jew. You, the reader, feel like you are in the story. You get mad when Elie's father gets beaten and you feel how hungry they must be. Elie piques the interest of the readers by writing about all the crazy and difficult things he did to stay alive as a Jew during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel was 15 when the Nazis came for the 15,000 Jews of his hometown of Sighet, Transylvania, in May 1944. Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his mother and sister were murdered within hours, while he was put to work as a slave labourer. Eight months later, the Germans evacuated the camp and forced the survivors on a death march that ended at Buchenwald. Wiesel was one of the few still alive when the Americans arrived in April 1945. This is written a style that seems to be typical of many modern Israeli novelists;...
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...Night by Elie Wiesel is a novel of post-Holocaust literature. It is a story about a Jewish man and his family and of the unspeakable horrors that they endured during World War II. Night is a retelling of a terrible story, everything that leads to Wiesel and his family entering Auschwitz, the most notorious death camp to this day, and the aftermath of liberation. Night is an incredibly well written novel. It twines together the power of fear and the loss of faith. It touches on how humanity changes in the face of power and oppression. This novel is able to not only testify, but discuss the atrocities of events that are not easily spoken about. Wiesel manages to takes many difficult subjects like murder, religion, and false hope and force people...
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...course of their entire life. Adolph Hitler was a German man who believed his race should rule over all other races. Blue eyes and blonde hair is what kept a person safe in the 1940’s. Hitler used the power of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) and the strength of the paramilitary organization Schutzstaffel (SS) to establish himself as dictator of Germany. He was a very charismatic man, which was beneficial to his goal to have people support his desire to rid Germany of all “undesirable” people. Under his direction and with the aid of his followers, Hitler was successful in “exterminating” millions of non-Germans and non-Christians in a dark segment of history called the Holocaust. Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and Gerda Weissmann’s recollections in One Survivor Remembers center around events which took place before and during World War II. These three titles observe how the human spirit is able to respond to unimaginable horrors and unspeakable situations with an indomitable inner strength, enduring hope, and creative defenses. Even in the worst circumstances, the human spirit will not surrender. In the 1940 time era, a person who was not German or Christian was tortured in many devastating and heart-wrenching ways. Slowly, everything was taken from these people, particularly the Jews. Initially, those who did not match the “perfect” identity were forced from their homes with a small amount of personal documents and other belongings and...
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